Captain's Glory

36

VULCAN SPACE CENTRAL

STARDATE 58571.6

Picard took only seconds to assess the situation, and he was appalled.

He was also startled to hear Kirk call for him.

Picard ran for the workstations where Kirk crouched. He glanced over his shoulder to see scores of creatures resembling Norinda tear apart other workstation tiers with the terrible focus of the Borg. They were clearly searching for something, or someone.

Picard ducked down beside Kirk, took in his condition, knew it was bad. “You look awful.”

Kirk smiled as if nothing were out of the ordinary. “Good to see you, too.”

Picard had no time for pleasantries or sparring. He estimated that the mass of beings disassembling on the far side of the command center would reach their position in only minutes. “What are those creatures?”

“Norinda,” Kirk said. He coughed suddenly, winced, and pressed a hand to his side.

“All of them?”

“She’s desperate,” Kirk said. “She’s so convinced that we have to love her, that she’s trying to become a version of herself that we can’t resist.” Kirk gave Picard a wry smile. “But that’s not how it works, is it?”

“This is hardly the time for a philosophical discussion of love.”

“Then what are you doing down here?”

Picard shook his head. Trust Kirk to try to find humor in the most dire of situations. “The gravity projectors are working, but the dispersal shielding protecting this place…” Picard shrugged.

“I’m surprised you could even beam in,” Kirk said. Picard could see he was becoming paler, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“Beaming in we can do-the Enterprise is hovering two hundred meters over the operations center.”

“The Belle Reve…?” Kirk asked with effort.

“Standing by.” Picard and Kirk both started as a horrendous crash of metal echoed in the center. “What’re they doing?”

“Looking for Joseph,” Kirk said, coughed again. “But he’ll be safe… I know he will be….”

Picard didn’t understand where Kirk’s assurance came from, didn’t want to argue with him. He pulled a tricorder from his belt, spoke urgently. “Look, Jim, we can’t beam anyone out past the shielding.” He held up the tricorder. “So I need to set this on a target, to be a beacon for the Enterprise and the Belle Reve to use to focus their gravity weapons.”

“Then you’re going to have to get it as close as you can to the original Norinda.”

Picard frowned. “How can I tell which one’s the original?”

“All the others have grown from her,” Kirk said. “She’ll be somewhere in the center.” He tugged at the combat tricorder strapped to his own wrist. “Use this one-it has a strap.”

Picard took it. “I’ll be right back.”

Kirk forced a grin. “I’ll be here.”

Picard peered over the edge of the workstation, saw more than a hundred Norindas, all resembling Joseph to varying degrees, half of them ripping apart the center in their search for the youth, half wandering without purpose, as though they’d been abandoned.

But there, in the center of the room, looking back and forth frantically as if lost, Picard saw one Norinda who was more familiar, more human than the others.

He had his target.

Dozens of Norindas turned to meet his charge.

“Yes!” they called out to him with chilling conviction. “Be loved!”

Even as Picard sprinted toward them he could see the danger he faced-a living barrier of hands raised to grasp, to tear… some of them already beginning to lose definition, dissolving into the black formless substance that could somehow extract people from this reality and absorb them into the Totality’s realm.

But Picard didn’t falter.

The brave crews of two ships waited above for his signal.

A galaxy waited to know if it would live or die.

He kept running.

The hungry, driven throng engulfed him.

“Accept! Be loved! Embrace!”

Picard dove forward, over one, past another, slid across the hard floor, then fought his way to the center of the maelstrom and leapt to his feet in front of the Norinda he recognized.

For a moment, the encircling, swaying vortex of creatures kept their distance while the first Norinda reached out to Picard as if to caress him with relief and adoration.

“Yes, Jean-Luc! You understand! You’ll tell James and Joseph and all of them!”

She touched his face and Picard shrank back as Norinda slowly and subtly began to shift her appearance to resemble Beverly Crusher.

“I love you so much,” Norinda crooned as her fingertips made electric contact with his skin. “I want to give you so much.”

The shock of gazing into familiar eyes that could not be Beverly’s was enough to catapult Picard into action, and at once he slapped the combat tricorder to the creature’s slender wrist.

An instant later, the creature’s touch burned against his face as Norinda’s arm rippled into a column of swirling dust and the tricorder, with nothing physical to support it, dropped to the floor, lost in the shadows.

“Why?!” she cried, inconsolable. “Why do you beings deny all that you love?”

Picard began to move back as Norinda sobbed before him, wrapping her arms around herself, racked by grief.

For a moment, as he saw her pain, understood her anguish, his heart went out to her, and then-

– more hands than he could count took hold of him, forcing him to the floor, holding his legs and arms immobile.

Picard cried out in surprise more than pain. He tried to tear himself away but there were too many of them.

He could only look up to see the original Norinda, no longer Beverly, moving toward him, eyes soft with tears.

“Embrace… ” all the Norindas murmured at once, their voices resonating like prayers in a temple. “Be loved….”

The hands that gripped Picard tightened, riveting him in place.

Norinda loomed over him.

“Why don’t you understand?” she asked, full of sorrow and incomprehension.

Picard prepared himself for what would come next-dissolution into her realm, into nothing.

His last thought was of Beverly.

Until a familiar voice broke through the moment of defeat.

“Norinda!”

Kirk’s voice echoed above the others.

Picard peered past the forest of Norindas to see Kirk staggering closer, each step a struggle.

“Let him go!” Kirk shouted. “You only want me! You’ve always wanted me!”

Picard struggled uselessly, helpless to aid his friend as black tendrils snapped from the multitude to snare Kirk and drag him forward.

The Norindas deposited Kirk on the floor beside Picard. There was no need to hold the new captive down. Kirk’s strength was exhausted. Where he sprawled now was where he would die.

“Brave attempt…” Picard said through clenched teeth, fighting the pain of the hands that imprisoned him. “Incredibly stupid… but brave nonetheless.”

“You would’ve done the same for me,” Kirk said hoarsely.

“Oh, probably not,” Picard said.

The two captains looked at each other, began to laugh through their pain.

“I do want you, James…” all the Norindas said.

“Then take me,” Kirk said. “I give myself to you.”

Picard watched in amazement as Norinda’s desolate expression changed to one of transcendent joy, and she became the only Norinda to speak.

“James… do you love me?”

“I understand you,” Kirk said. “I understand what’s driving you. I can’t hate that. I can’t hate you.”

Norinda held out her arms to him. “Will you be embraced in love?”

“I have loved and been loved. And that’s why I’m giving myself to you, so you’ll leave all the others I love unharmed.”

Norinda hesitated, uncertain. “But I want them, too.”

“Love carries a price,” Kirk said. “If you truly want to make all the others happy– “

“Yes! I do!” Norinda interrupted.

“– then take me,” Kirk continued, “and give the others their freedom.”

“No,” the Norindas sighed in unison . “They will be alone….”

The one Norinda stepped closer to Kirk and Picard. “I will be alone.”

“You’ll have me,” Kirk said, roughly, urgently. Picard knew his friend was fading.

“Not enough,” Norinda said. Picard heard Kirk sigh as the one Norinda began to lose form. “Never enough,” the Norindas sadly chanted.

A slow cloud of darkness moved toward Picard and Kirk. The negotiation was over. Norinda’s reversion was complete and they were in the presence of the basic, primal, all-encompassing Totality, all-encompassing desire.

Picard glanced at Kirk. “Well, I never wanted to die in bed….”

Kirk grinned weakly. “I never wanted to die….”

STOP.

Picard didn’t understand where that command had come from. It wasn’t spoken, but somehow he had sensed it.

LET THEM GO.

The one Norinda coalesced into her humanoid form, stepped back.

FACE ME.

All the Norindas turned from their captives as one.

Picard raised his head as he was released.

There was someone else in the command center now.

It was Joseph.

And once more he had changed.