Captain's Glory

23

THE OORT CLOUD, SECTOR 001

STARDATE 58567.5

The bridge of the Enterprise was quiet, charged, tense.

The Belle Reve was still within the Enterprise’s shields, held against the larger ship’s lower hull. Her warp core had not breached. Sensors showed it was no longer operational. But her shields remained up.

That meant Picard could not beam Kirk, Scott, McCoy, and the holographic doctor off the captured vessel and end this standoff peacefully.

Eighteen minutes had passed since Worf had detected the Belle Reve’s warp core as it built to a breach, then abruptly and inexplicably powered down. La Forge had reviewed the sensor readings and could make no sense of them; the core should have exploded. Why it had not remained a mystery.

But at least, Picard thought with relief, whatever had happened-or was happening-on the Belle Reve, he was no longer caught in an equal confrontation with Kirk. Two Starfleet vessels had joined the Enterprise: the Tucker and the Garneau. Both ships were Gagarin-class: fast, heavily armed and heavily shielded cruiser-escorts built to engage the Dominion’s Jem’Hadar.

The two ships held station a dozen kilometers to the port and starboard of the Enterprise, their weapons locked on Kirk’s ship, ready to disable it the moment it tried to escape. And in less than an hour, the hastily repaired Titan would arrive, as well. With the combined tractor beams of four Starfleet vessels, Kirk’s ship could finally be taken in tow, no matter how he tried to manipulate his artificial-gravity field. The waiting would be over.

Then Leybenzon reported from his auxiliary console and everything changed once again.

“Captain Picard, it looks like Kirk was hiding his full crew complement from us.”

Disappointment stung Picard.

“I know,” Troi said consolingly, without his having said a word. “You were hoping for the best.”

As always, the counselor was right. Picard had anticipated Kirk’s being pigheaded and stubborn, but he had not wanted to think that Kirk would deliberately lie. Outright deception was the mark of an adversary.

“How many crew?” he asked.

Leybenzon adjusted the controls on his console. “So far, I’ve picked up one additional life sign.”

“Only one?” Picard didn’t understand. He went to the security officer’s console to review the sensor readings himself. “Why use the Belle Reve’s screens and shields to hide just one individual?”

“Sensors indicate that Kirk’s ship didn’t employ any deceptive countermeasures. That tells me that either his real countermeasures are even more sophisticated than the specs we have, or– “

“Or that extra crew member just appeared on the ship in the last few minutes,” Picard concluded.

He couldn’t imagine how the situation could get worse. Now it didn’t matter if Kirk had been lying or not. Somehow, in some way, Kirk’s ship had been boarded, most likely by a shapechanger.

Which meant Worf was correct.

The Belle Reve was now an enemy vessel.

Picard had no choice but to treat it as such.

“It’s Spock, all right.”

McCoy put his medical tricorder away, looked over at the Emergency Medical Hologram.

“I concur,” the hologram said, and closed his own tricorder.

Kirk looked down at his old friend, still lying on the deck in engineering, where Norinda had somehow conjured him up even as she’d vanished. Spock was breathing, his eyes were open, but he was completely unresponsive. “What’s wrong with him, Bones?”

“Well, from his brain-wave patterns,” McCoy said, not sounding totally convinced, “he could be in a deep meditative state.”

“Meditating?” Kirk said. He’d had occasion to disturb Spock’s meditation in the past; on a starship, a crisis could erupt at any time. But always, Spock had been able to emerge from his state of intense concentration within a minute or so, and he’d usually been able to speak during the process. What was different this time?

“No sign of transporter trauma?” Kirk asked.

McCoy shook his head. “He wasn’t beamed in.”

“But he was… reconstructed here,” Kirk said, trying to puzzle it out for himself. “I’ve read of cases of transporter comas… the brain’s quantum state isn’t quite reestablished perfectly, and– “

The hologram interrupted him. “Captain, it’s been more than a century since a legitimate case of transporter catatonia has been reported in the literature.” He looked down at Spock, pursed his lips. “I suggest smelling salts.”

McCoy grinned at the hologram. “A man after my own heart. I have some in the infirmary.”

And then Spock moved.

“Bones!” Kirk said.

Awkwardly, Spock got to his feet, eyes open and un-blinking, staring straight ahead as if completely unaware of the two men and the hologram before him.

Kirk couldn’t restrain himself. He grabbed Spock’s arm. “Spock! You’re back! You’ve been gone a year!”

But Spock’s only reaction was to slowly turn his head until he looked directly at the main exit.

He pulled away from Kirk, walked toward the door.

McCoy and the hologram both had their tricorders out again, scanning Spock as the door slipped open and he stepped into the corridor.

“Now what’s wrong with him?” Kirk demanded as he followed Spock toward the turbolift.

McCoy glanced up from his tricorder. “From these readings, it appears he’s still meditating.”

The hologram peered over McCoy’s shoulder at the tricorder’s display, deeply intrigued. “Remarkable. An almost complete suppression of all conscious thought.”

Kirk suddenly felt certain he knew what Spock was doing.

McCoy caught the look of realization on his face. “What is it, Jim? What do you know that we don’t?”

But Kirk had no time to share his discovery. Among her many other abilities, Norinda possessed a telepathic sense. If Spock knew something that he didn’t want Norinda to know, he was quite capable of using his formidable mental discipline to keep that knowledge from his conscious mind and thus from her perception. And then Kirk realized that if Norinda was using her telepathic sense on him instead of Spock, she now knew what Spock was attempting, as well.

Spock stepped onto the turbolift with Kirk, McCoy, and the hologram crowding in with him.

Kirk touched his combadge. He had to keep Norinda off the ship, and from what he had just witnessed, he could make a good guess about what she was using as her access point. “Scotty-take the warp core completely offline.”

“Too late,” Scotty replied from the bridge. “I just saw a surge in the standby relays. It’s drawing power again, and I don’t know what source it’s using.”

Over the thrum of the turbolift, Kirk felt the Cochrane generators beginning to pulse through the ship.

“Scotty, eject the core if you have to, but don’t let it power up!”

Scott’s next words were just what Kirk had hoped wouldn’t happen.

“Captain-the tendrils are back! They’re growing over the core!”

Norinda had looked into Kirk’s mind and had learned what Spock was attempting to do. She was coming back to stop him.

“Now what?” Picard asked as he studied the sensor scans from the Belle Reve.

“Their warp core appears to be coming online again,” Worf said with suspicion.

“Get Geordi on those readings,” Picard ordered. “Stand ready to drop shields and use our tractor beams to push the Belle Reve free before her core explodes.”

“This could be another trick, sir.”

Picard shook his head. “It might’ve worked when we were the only ship within range. But the Tucker and the Garneau can lay down a crossfire to keep Kirk from going to warp.”

Then La Forge reported from engineering. “Captain, I’m watching the scans of the Belle Reve, and they’re in real trouble.”

“Give me details,” Picard said.

“I’m seeing multiple attempts to eject the core… they’ve depressurized their engineering hold… but the breach is about to go critical.”

“What is going on in that ship?” Picard asked. But his crew had no answer.

The turbolift doors slid open onto the bridge. Kirk sprinted out to join Scott, glanced back to see Spock heading slowly but deliberately for the life-support station.

“I’ve done all I can,” Scott said. “But it’s as if the core has a mind of its own.”

Kirk followed Scott’s gaze to the center viewscreen, still displaying a visual sensor image of engineering.

A tangled mass of tendrils fully encased the core. Flashes of blazing golden light shot through a few small gaps between the tendrils as the core pulsed in its run-up to full power.

And with each flash, a tendril peeled off from the main body, bent down to the deck, and rose up as a humanoid.

Among them, Kirk saw Norinda take shape, once again in admiral’s uniform. Others joining her wore Starfleet uniforms from more than a decade earlier, specialist colors bright on their shoulders.

“Are any of those human?” Kirk asked.

“If they’re movin’ around in a vacuum, ye can be sure they’re not,” Scott said, stoutly unafraid. He checked his controls. “We’re ten seconds from breach, sir. And there’s nothin’ can be done….”

For just an instant, Kirk felt sorrow well up in him, not for himself but for all who had trusted him, whom he had now let down. Bones and Scotty, the holographic doctor, and most of all, his son.

But just as quickly as it arose, that sorrow vanished as Kirk remembered-

“Spock!”

He wheeled to see Spock at the life-support station, methodically making adjustments to one of the settings on the console.

Before Kirk could even think to wonder which settings Spock was changing, he knew the answer, even if he didn’t understand it. He felt his own weight double, heard Scott’s chair creak, McCoy’s annoyed exclamation of protest.

Kirk chose an empty chair, dropped into it with a bone-jarring thud.

“Spock…?” he gasped.

Kirk struggled to draw breath as his body grew even heavier, his shoulders slumped forward. All around him, he could hear console cabinets groan, some small popping sounds.

Spock had set the ship’s artificial gravity to at least three times Earth normal and it was still increasing.

Kirk fought for breath in the unexpected onslaught.

McCoy was lying flat on the deck, apparently unconscious.

The hologram was unaffected by the change in gravity and stood over his fallen fellow physician, tricorder in hand.

“Captain!” Scott muttered. “Look!”

Kirk fought to turn his head toward Scott. The engineer’s hand trembled on his console as he strained to point to the viewscreen.

Kirk blinked slowly, painfully. The shape of his eyes was being distorted by the increasing gravity, making his vision blur.

But with extreme effort he focused on the humanoid forms in engineering and saw them decomposing. In their place, twisting pillars of black sand devolved into smoke, fading from existence along with the tendrils that had swarmed the warp core.

Free of their influence, the ship’s computer now accepted Scott’s override commands.

The pulsing light in the core slowed and dimmed as once again it shut down.

The breach had been averted.

Kirk slumped in the chair, concentrating on each hard-won breath.

“Gravity, Spock?”

“As I calculated,” Spock answered calmly, “four times Earth normal is sufficient to prevent the Totality from reaching us.”

Kirk tried to nod in understanding and instantly regretted it. His chin remained on his chest, and the back of his neck paid the price.

“Reach us from where?” Kirk grunted, forcing his head up so he could see Spock again. The Totality was so unlike anything in this universe, he concluded that they could have only come from some other dimensional realm, some other reality.

But Kirk was not Spock.

“They are from here,” Spock said. “The Totality arose in our universe.”

Kirk blinked as dark stars flickered at the edge of his vision. “But they’re so different….”

“On the contrary,” Spock said, betraying no sign that he also was being subjected to four times Earth gravity. “They are the life-force that inhabits ninety-six percent of the universe. It is we, chemical-based biological life, that occupy the remaining four percent.

“This is their universe, Jim. To them, we’re the extremophiles, life as they do not know it, or understand it. In effect, we are little more than parasites that the Totality feels compelled to uplift or exterminate.

“They will allow us no other fate.”