“I will do no such thing. You have no authority in open space.”
The Vulcan was about to respond to Picard’s challenge when he abruptly looked offscreen as if someone had just arrived with an important message.
It was the right message.
“Belle Rêve, you will cease all laser communications with the Enterprise at once.”
Picard hoped Spock’s logic was sound as he forced an escalation. “We don’t have any laser-communications capability.”
The Vulcan glared at him from the screen. Then McCoy announced that the Vulcan ship to starboard was moving in at high speed, and just as quickly as that had positioned itself directly at the midpoint between the Belle Rêve and the Enterprise, blocking the laser link between the two craft.
Picard tapped the control that cut viewscreen communications. “Is he where we need him to be?”
“Precisely,” Spock said.
“Fire,” Picard ordered.
For the first time since the war with the Totality had begun, light-matter life fought back.
The attack was crude, the weapon of choice imprecise.
Had the Enterprise and the Belle Rêve attempted such a tactic on a Romulan warbird, after a few seconds of confusion the Romulans would have laughed and adjusted their shields to make themselves impervious to further annoyances.
But a few seconds was all that Picard and Riker needed.
So far from the Vulcan sun, there was little to see in the darkness of interstellar space.
The Belle Rêve and the Enterprise could be noticed only by their running lights, effectively invisible against the vista of stars.
The Vulcan cruiser might have been glimpsed, traced by the glow of its impulse engines as it dropped into position between the two Starfleet vessels. But once it was in place, its running lights and the soft illumination from its viewports were lost against the tens of thousands of other points of light that made up the galactic band of stars.
The energy that the Enterprise and the Belle Rêve directed against the Vulcan ship was equally invisible.
Each ship altered its artificial-gravity generators to project toward the other, out of phase. The phase shift was precisely tuned so that the peaks of the Casimir wavelengths met at the coordinates of the Vulcan ship, where they amplified each other, creating a dramatic increase in local gravity.
At this point in the attack, an observer might have seen flashes of light as interior conduits collapsed within the Vulcan ship and multiple explosions strobed behind its viewports. A few more seconds, and the ship was easily discernible because of the detonation of its port nacelle.
Then the heavens were ignited by multiple quantum-torpedo bursts and phaser fire from the second Vulcan cruiser.
But the light show didn’t last long.
The second cruiser made the mistake of coming to the assistance of the first. When it was between the two Starfleet vessels, it was also caught in the gravity waves.
More explosions followed.
The cruisers were crushed.
And when they were scanned, no evidence of any physical bodies was found, because there had been no real Vulcans on board either ship. Only projections of the Totality.
The Federation strategy was a success.
As soon as Leybenzon confirmed that there had been no casualties, cheers erupted on the bridge of the Enterprise.
“Break radio silence,” Riker told Worf. “Send a message to Admiral Janeway: It worked.”
Picard appeared on the viewscreen, definitely pleased. “Well done, Will.”
“To us both.”
“Ready for round two?”
“I’m ready for as many rounds as it takes.”
Picard grinned. “See you at Vulcan,” he said.
Explosions still erupted from the tumbling ruins of the Vulcan cruisers as their fuel and energy systems broke down and consumed themselves.
But even those small, sporadic flashes were eclipsed by the sudden glowing starbows of two ships jumping to warp.
The first skirmish in the battle of Vulcan had been fought.
It was not the last.
34
THE TOTALITY
STARDATE UNKNOWN
There was something Kirk knew he was forgetting.
He heard water rushing, and at least that sounded familiar.
He turned to see a stream curving gracefully through a grove of shade trees. He looked up to see the sun, saw a domed roof instead, hundreds of meters high, studded with lights.
I’ve been here before, he thought.
There was so much that was green and growing. The scent of life was strong, comforting.
He took a deep breath, reveling in the sensation.
And then he remembered.
His rib had been broken.
His finger had been snapped.
But he felt no pain.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Norinda asked.
Kirk wheeled to face her and saw instead a Reman, towering, gray and cadaverous, with fangs and batlike ears.
“I’m on Remus,” Kirk said. He remembered now. It was just last year. The Federation thought Spock had died in an assassination attempt. Kirk had come to find the truth.
But he couldn’t remember if he had found it or not.
The Reman who was Norinda stared down at him with curiosity. “What is truth, James?”
“Not this,” Kirk said, and he rejected the illusion.
The Reman exploded into black sand.
Kirk covered his eyes with his arm, and when he looked out from cover again—
—it was dawn, bloodred, long black shadows like clawed wounds carved through the mound of scattered debris and small fires.
I’ve been here, too, Kirk thought. And though his body still felt no pain from his injuries, his heart ached as he stared at the destruction around him. He tried to remember why that should be so, why this landscape should cause him such anguish.
Two figures approached, shadows against the rising sun.
He thought of Bajor then. Of how, two years ago, he and Picard had marched across the desert by the Valor Ocean. But this wasn’t Bajor, and this moment was earlier.
He wondered how he knew that.
The figures came closer: a young Vulcan woman, an old Ferengi male.
But he wasn’t a Ferengi, Kirk remembered.
He was…he was…
The old Ferengi coughed and pointed a black-nailed finger at Kirk. “If I were a Preserver,” he laughed, “given the task of educating an entire galactic Federation to prepare for its future among a universe of other federations…”
Kirk didn’t hear the rest of the familiar, haunting words, because he suddenly, painfully, understood where he was.
Halkan.
All around him were the ruins of the starship that had claimed his Teilani’s life.
He sank to his knees in the red soil and wept as the full memory of this place and this time returned.
Standing over him, the old Ferengi who wasn’t a Ferengi, yet was older than any human mind could comprehend, cackled on. “To have the power to preserve life and improve the conditions in which it can flourish, and yet deliberately choose not to accept your responsibility to exercise that power…Captain Kirk, I submit that despite what you see around you, there is no greater tragedy than that.”
Kirk looked up through his tears to see the Ferengi’s dark and ageless eyes gazing down at him, looking through him.
What else had he said on the plain of death?
Something about Kirk having been chosen?
About Teilani having been chosen?
“Joseph…” Kirk gasped as a pattern formed just out of reach.
Then the Ferengi was gone, though no transporter had claimed him, just as had happened so many years ago, leaving Kirk alone with his grief, and with the young Vulcan.
She looked at him in bewilderment. “You can have anything, James. Be anywhere. Feel anything. And yet you choose this?”
Kirk blinked against the bright morning sun of this world, and in that moment the young Vulcan became Norinda.
Kirk stood, drawing strength from the loss he had experienced here, because in this illusion, Norinda had not become Teilani.
In the same moment that realization had formed within his mind, Norinda shattered into black and shadows streamed past Kirk until—
—he squinted in the bright lights of the museum, no longer startled by the abrupt change of scene.
He looked around to get his bearings, stopped in horror as he saw the small, stuffed, mummified body of Balok. The diminutive alien’s mouth was molded into a permanently twisted smile as he perpetually contemplated the glass of tranya that had been wired to his hand.
Kirk was in a chamber of horrors.
And he knew who had created it.
He had.
His other side.
The Emperor Tiberius who had brought Earth and Vulcan to abject ruin in the parallel universe that was a dark reflection of Kirk’s own.
And yet, Kirk knew, it was to this chamber, the lair of Tiberius, that he had come willingly to barter for Teilani’s life only six years ago.
Heavy footsteps sounded behind him. Metal upon stone, the sound of jackboots in any age.
Kirk knew he was in a dimension other than ordinary existence. He knew Norinda was searching through his memories, trying to find a time and a place he’d accept as his new home in her realm.
That knowledge strengthened him.
He turned to face Tiberius again, to stand up to that other side of himself and once again make peace with him, as he had in the past.
But there was no mirror for him to look into.
The person who approached was Norinda.
“This is wrong, James. I give you love and you surround yourself with…” She looked around the museum cases filled with atrocities. “…with such ugliness.”
Kirk felt even stronger. How had he ever found Norinda desirable?
“I know exactly why I’m here,” Kirk said. “And I know why you never will.”
Norinda’s face tightened in pain and confusion and flew apart as—
—the holographic sign floating overhead flashed BIENVENU VOYAGEURS A TRAVERS LE TEMPS / WELCOME TIME TRAVELERS.
Kirk laughed in the shock of recognition. He saw the crowd surrounding him dressed in formalwear, heard the excited conversation, the music, the clinking of crystal, and knew exactly where he was: Île Ste-Hélène, Montréal.
It was almost seven years ago and he was on his first trip back to Earth since the ill-fated launch of the Enterprise-B. Meeting old friends. Even confronting Janeway’s duplicate from the parallel universe.
He knew that in this here-and-now Teilani waited for him in their home on Chal. She had urged him to take this journey and return to Earth, never dreaming of the consequences: Joseph’s conception; their wedding; her death.
But here he was again, near the beginning of his unexpected second chance, feeling the promise of life still to come. He realized he wouldn’t change these moments even if he could. With great sorrow had come great joy, and perhaps that was the way of things.
Janeway of the other universe approached him then, dressed as a server, carrying a tray of drinks through the crowd.
Kirk wasn’t fooled for an instant.
“It’s because you’re not in control,” he said, continuing their conversation.
The Janeway duplicate became Norinda.
“I’m trying to give you love!” she pleaded in frustration.
Kirk marveled at her ignorance.
“But I already have it,” he told her.
Norinda gave up the debate then. She fought his resistance in the only way she could, the only way left to her after so many years as a projection into Kirk’s realm, out of touch with her own.
Kirk’s life sped before him in ever faster strobes of recreated experience, as if flashing in time to the beating of enormous wings.
He was a child again, running in fear through the snow on Tarsus IV, chased by Kodos.
His mount thundered across the beach of Chal, and he exulted in the scent of the sea, the heat of the sun, the purity of the blue sky, white sand, and the love of Teilani riding at his side, long hair alive in the wind.
He was in his parents’ farmhouse. The Romulan assassins hunting him. Seeing Teilani for the first time in the kitchen, tasting their first kiss.
Telling Spock and McCoy he was retiring, going to Chal to find Teilani, to uncover the mystery of that world and its people, to find love.
On the rocks at Veridian with Picard, that first time they had met face-to-face, the long fall, the shadow of death approaching, but seeing at last it was Sarek.
The Borg. Destroying the machine world to save Picard. Losing himself in an energy beam that brought him—
—to Chal again, to Teilani, to battle the virogen plague that had scarred her beauty.
In the flashing of light and darkness, in the stream of all the experiences he had ever had, new knowledge was born: Kirk realized the secret that was being revealed, part of it, at least.
Teilani…All things led to Teilani.
Just as Teilani led to Joseph.
And Joseph led to—
Norinda cried out in heartrending anguish and the whole of the Totality’s realm joined in her denial.
Another flash and Kirk was on the bridge of his own Enterprise, Gary Mitchell at the helm as the ship approached the galactic barrier.
For a moment, Kirk was puzzled that Norinda had found this event, a memory that had no connection to Teilani or to Joseph.
Why is this here? Kirk thought.
He glanced around the bridge as it had been at the beginning of his first five-year mission. It was so new, the crew so young.
Then he saw the anomaly.
Doctor Elizabeth Dehner, the psychologist who’d been lost on this mission with Gary. She was present, but as Norinda.
“No,” Norinda said. She stood transfixed by the seething purple energy of the galactic barrier on the viewscreen.
“Not again!” she cried with the full force of the Totality and—
—when the explosion of darkness ended, Kirk was back where it had all begun.
Norinda’s ship, at a time when he had just been given command of the Enterprise.
Kirk realized now how much of her ship Norinda had reproduced on Remus—the domed environment filled with a hundred shades of green; each breath bringing with it the rich perfume of a jungle in flower, lush plants, sparkling rivers; a wall of luminescent blooms, interwoven clusters of scarlet and saffron.
He understood that connection now, between what he had seen in his first months on the Enterprise and what he had seen just last year.
Norinda didn’t know it, but the appeal and power and mystery of life in Kirk’s realm had already conquered her before the Totality could conquer the rest of the universe.
“I don’t understand,” Norinda said.
She appeared before him as she had that first time. Swathed in a diaphanous wrap that glowed with the colors of the jungle-flower wall, her dark hair lustrous, flowing, like a windswept shadow.
“You never will,” Kirk said.
“But I have so much to offer you.”
“What you offer is deadly to us.”
She looked at him in silence, then repeated, “What you offer is deadly to us.” A single tear left a glistening track down her flawless cheek.
Kirk had no way of knowing whether Norinda was parroting his words or truly understood that each of their realms was fatal to the other.
Kirk almost felt sorrow for her.
He had come to Vulcan, walked knowingly into her trap, fully prepared to give his life to save his son.
Then, when she had absorbed him into the Totality, letting him know he was wrong in his conclusion and that there was nothing special about him at all, he had accepted death. He was prepared to let go as long as he knew Jos
eph would be free.
But in trying to entrap, beguile, confuse, and possess him, she’d accomplished the opposite of what she had hoped to gain.
“No…” Norinda wept as Kirk’s thoughts became clear to her.
“Even here, there’s nothing you can do to control me,” Kirk said quietly. “I have Teilani in my heart, I have my son, and I always will.”
This time, the explosion was like a supernova.
It was dark and cold when Kirk could see again.
He scented fertilizer, the old-fashioned kind, and it made him think of his family’s farm and of—
He looked around in shock at the so-familiar old buildings.
He heard the hiss of sprinklers watering the immaculate lawns.
He saw the statue of Zefram Cochrane reaching to the low-hanging clouds of San Francisco and the hidden stars beyond.
He was on the grounds of Starfleet Academy as it had been ages ago, when he had been a teenager, as Joseph was today.
“Are all your memories the same?!” she demanded.
Kirk knew then that he had her.
There was a way to fight love: with more love. Real love. Family, friends, and lovers.
Kirk had those—all of those—waiting for him in his realm, in his life, and in his memories.
The lesson had been taught. To him, if not to Norinda. He would not accept death. He was ready to fight.
This time, Norinda was not the only thing that exploded.
Everything did, and—
Kirk was in nothingness, with no frame of reference, no illusory environment. All he was aware of was that he was aware, and that he could still hear Norinda.
I tried to bring you here by choice, James. It’s easier that way.
Kirk knew what she meant. Spock had described it.
Norinda was taking him deeper into the Totality, past the point of no return, to show him the ultimate secret.
Or to show him death.
35
Captain's Glory Page 25
