Duty, Honor, Redemption

by Novelization by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “That leaves us no choice,” Kirk said. “We’ve got to destroy the probe before it destroys Earth.”

  “The attempt would be futile, Admiral,” Spock said in a matter-of-fact tone. “The probe would neutralize us easily, as it has neutralized every other starship that has faced it, each one more powerful than the craft you command. Fleet Commander Cartwright’s orders to all Starfleet vessels are to turn away.”

  “We can’t! Orders be damned, I won’t turn away from my homeworld! Isn’t there any alternative?”

  Spock considered Admiral Kirk’s question as an interesting intellectual exercise.

  “There is one, of course,” he said. “The obvious one. I could not guarantee its success, but the attempt would be possible.”

  “The alternative isn’t obvious to me,” the admiral said.

  “We could attempt to find some humpback whales.”

  “You just said there aren’t any except on the Earth of the past,” McCoy said.

  “Your memory is excellent, Doctor,” Spock replied. “That is precisely what I said.”

  “Then how…?” McCoy glanced from Spock to Kirk and back again. “Now wait just a damned minute!”

  Admiral Kirk made an instant decision. Spock recalled that this was James Kirk’s characteristic behavior.

  “Spock,” Kirk said, “start computations for a time warp.” He turned toward McCoy. “Come on, Bones. Let’s pay Scotty a visit.”

  McCoy started to protest, but Kirk left the computer room, pulling McCoy along behind him. Spock watched them go, bemused. Kirk had asked him a question and he had answered it, never intending to base any action on his information. Still, it would be an interesting challenge to see if he could successfully solve the mathematical problem Admiral Kirk had posed him.

  Turning back to the computer, Spock overrode the report on humpback whales and began to compose the complex equations.

  Four

  The traveler’s joy overcame the distress of losing contact with the beings of this little world. The planet lay enshrouded in an impenetrable cloud. Great thunderstorms wracked it. Where they did not flood the land they seared it with lightning, setting fires that added soot and ash and gases to the roiling clouds. The globe’s temperature continued to fall. Soon the rain would turn to snow from poles to equator. The insignificant life that remained would perish from the cold. After the world became sterile, and the clouds rained themselves out, and the particulate matter settled, the carbon dioxide left in the atmosphere would aid in the world’s rapid warming. Then the traveler could begin its real work.

  Until then, it need only wait.

  Doggedly, McCoy followed Jim through the neck of the Bounty. The plan disturbed him deeply, but the reasons for his discomfort took time to puzzle out.

  “Jim,” he said, “are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” Jim said.

  “Time travel,” McCoy said. “Trying to change the future, the past—”

  “We aren’t trying to change the future or the past, Bones. We’re trying to change the present.”

  “But we’re the past of other people’s future.”

  “That’s the most sophistic argument I ever heard,” Jim said.

  McCoy forged on, trying to ignore the edge in Kirk’s voice. “What if we change something that makes a difference to history?”

  “But that’s the whole point, Bones. To make a difference.”

  “Don’t evade my question—you know what I mean!”

  Jim strode on in silence.

  “In the old days, on the Enterprise,” McCoy said, “we had the same kind of disaster to face. And sometimes we had to do the hardest thing in the universe. Sometimes we had to do nothing.”

  Jim’s stride hesitated, but he kept going.

  “Jim—what would the Guardian say?”

  Jim swung around, grabbed McCoy by the front of his shirt, and shoved him against the bulkhead.

  “Don’t talk to me about the old days on the Enterprise!” Jim shouted. “Don’t talk to me about the Guardian of Forever! I went back in time to save your life—and I had to stand by and watch someone else I loved die! I had to stand by while Edith died—and do nothing!”

  “It was the right thing to do.”

  “You didn’t think so at the time. I’m not sure I think so now. Ever since, I’ve wondered, what if I’d saved her? What if I’d brought her back? Everything would have been…so different…”

  “It wouldn’t have worked. You couldn’t have brought a twentieth-century person into a twenty-third-century world and expected her to adapt.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “Jim,” McCoy said, “she wouldn’t have come.”

  “She loved me!”

  “So what? She had a mission in her life, and she wouldn’t have given it up to go with you. No matter how much she loved you. And if you’d brought her against her will, even to save her life, she would have seen it as a feeble excuse and she would have seen it as betrayal.”

  Jim stared at him, shocked by the blunt recital of the truth. “What’s the matter with you, Bones?”

  “Let go of me,” McCoy said.

  Jim loosed his rigid grip on McCoy’s shirtfront. “You’re telling me to stand back and watch what’s left of my family die. You’re telling me to write off my homeworld—and yours. I won’t do it! And I can’t believe you want me to! The future hasn’t happened yet, Bones! If I start believing that nothing I do can—or should—change it, then what’s the point of anything?”

  “I don’t know, Jim. I just know you shouldn’t do this.”

  “And just how,” Jim said, “do you propose to stop me?” He turned away and left McCoy standing in the corridor.

  McCoy had no answer to James Kirk’s rage, but as his old friend strode away, he still sought to counter the intuitive force of Jim’s argument.

  Upset and angry, Jim Kirk entered the engine room of the Bounty. Everything about McCoy’s argument troubled him: the argument itself, the doctor’s having proposed it, and the possibility that McCoy might be right. Could Spock’s suggestion, if Jim carried it out, cause some traumatic change in the universe? The possibility, even the probability, existed whenever one began interfering with the vectors of space-time. Jim had faced enormous personal danger and worse emotional pain in order to keep from disrupting the past, and thus the future he lived in.

  But I’m not going to disrupt the past, he thought. I’m going to enter it and remove something that’s going to be destroyed anyway.

  He intended to change his own present. He could not make himself believe that what he planned was wrong.

  Besides, Jim thought, if the plan posed so much danger—beyond the obvious danger to my people and my ship, which I suppose Spock did not consider germane—Spock never would have suggested it in the first place.

  If Jim did nothing, Earth would die. He put McCoy’s objections from his mind, for he feared that if he let them affect him he would fail. If he tried and failed, Earth would die anyway.

  “Scotty!”

  “Aye, sir?” Scott said, appearing from behind a complex webwork of engine structure.

  “Come with me to the cargo bay, would you?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The engineer accompanied him into the huge, empty chamber. McCoy followed in perturbed silence. Jim found it difficult to estimate the dimensions of the oddly proportioned and dimly lit space.

  “Scotty, how long is this bay?”

  “Abou’ twenty meters, Admiral.”

  “That ought to be enough. Can you enclose it to hold water?”

  Scott pondered. “ ’Twould be easy wi’ a force field, but there isna sufficient force field capability in the Bounty. ’Twould have to be done mechanically. I suppose I can, sir. Are ye plannin’ to take a swim?”

  “Off the deep end, Mister Scott,” McCoy said grimly.

  Jim ignored him. “Scotty, we have to find so
me humpbacks.”

  “Humpbacked…people?”

  “Humpback whales. They’re fifteen or sixteen meters in length. They’ll mass about forty tons.”

  “They willna have much room to swim.”

  “It doesn’t matter. They won’t have to stay in the hold for long. I hope.”

  “Long or short, sir, I canna be sure abou’ the ship. ’Twill handle only so much mass.”

  “You’ll work it out, Scotty. You’ve got to. Tell me what you’ll need, and I’ll do my best to get it for you. And remember: two of them.”

  “Two, Admiral?”

  “It takes two to tango, Mister Scott.”

  As he headed for the bay hatch, he heard Scott mutter softly, “The great flood, and Noah’s ark. What a way to finally go…”

  Halfway across the cargo bay, McCoy caught up to him.

  “You’re really going to try this! Aside from everything else—time travel in this rust bucket?”

  “We’ve done it before.” The ship would make a full-power warp-speed dive toward the sun, letting the gravity field accelerate it. If it picked up enough velocity, it would slingshot around the sun and enter a time warp. And if not—

  “If you can’t pick up enough speed,” McCoy said, as if reading his thoughts and completing them, “you fry.”

  “We could land on Earth and freeze instead,” Jim said, his tone grim. “Bones, you don’t really prefer me to do nothing—?”

  “I prefer a dose of common sense and logic! Never mind the ethics of the situation. You are proposing to head backward in time, find humpback whales, bring them forward in time, drop them off—and hope they tell this probe what to go do with itself!”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “If you’ve got a better idea, now’s the time.”

  McCoy held his gaze a moment, then looked away. He did not have a better idea.

  Jim entered the Bounty’s control chamber. Spock had returned to his station. Incomprehensible equations flickered across his computer screen. Jim took his place and turned on the intercom so his voice would reach Scott.

  “Could I have everyone’s attention, please.” It seemed strange to him, but appropriate, to request their attention rather than expecting it. “Each of you has a difficult decision to make. The information that Mister Spock and Mister Scott have offered leads me to believe that it is possible, though risky, to go backward in time and obtain two humpback whales, the species with which the probe is trying to communicate. If the attempt is successful, it could mean the survival of Earth. But we have no guarantee of success. The Bounty could be destroyed. We might all die.”

  He paused, waiting for a reaction. No one spoke. Finally Sulu gave him a curious glance.

  “You mentioned a difficult decision, Admiral.”

  “I intend to make the attempt, Commander Sulu. But anyone who wishes to remain in our own time is free to take one of the rescue pods and leave the ship before we enter the probe’s apparent sphere of influence. An entire flotilla of rescue craft is hovering outside the solar system, unable to risk a close approach to Earth. It’s likely they could rendezvous with a rescue pod within a few minutes—a few hours at most. Remaining behind is probably…the sensible thing to do.”

  “You need somebody to fly this beast,” Sulu said, and turned back to his console.

  “Would anyone care to cast an opposing vote?”

  Spock glanced up only long enough to cock one eyebrow.

  “I think what you have here is consensus, Admiral,” Chekov said, and also returned to his console.

  Uhura acted as if Jim had never asked if anyone cared to abandon the group. “Conditions on Earth appear to be getting worse, sir,” she said.

  “Scott here, Admiral. Wi’ the proper materials—the proper twentieth-century materials—I’ll be able to build ye a tank.”

  “Thank you, Mister Scott.” Jim glanced at McCoy.

  “You know how I feel about this, Jim,” McCoy said.

  “Then you’d better take a pod and get out fast.”

  “Who said anything about getting out? I’m not getting into any rescue pod.”

  “Very well,” Jim said. “We will proceed without delay…. Thank you all.” He turned to the science officer. “Mister Spock, your computations?”

  “In progress, Admiral.”

  “Uhura, get me through to Starfleet Command.”

  “I’ll try, sir.”

  In all his years on Vulcan, on Earth, and on many worlds in between, Sarek had never observed such weather. Waves of rain and sleet pounded against the windows. A repair crew had tried to shore up the glass, but the seals had sprung again. Water sprayed through the cracks and pooled on the floor. Lightning burst continuously, turning the night’s darkness brighter than Earth’s yellow day.

  Sarek always felt cold on Earth. In the past, he had always found it possible simply to acknowledge the fact and then ignore it. He had been well trained to ignore the trivial matter of physical comfort. But now, as Starfleet Command diverted all its remaining power in an attempt to maintain communications, the temperature within the building fell to match the ambient temperature outside, which itself continued to fall. Sarek felt colder than he had ever felt in his life. He tried to increase the metabolism of his body to compensate, but he could not outdistance the chill.

  Shivering, Sarek gazed through the observation window. Torrential rain whipped across the waves of the bay and pounded against the glass. The clouds darkened overhead. Lightning bursts illuminated each individual raindrop to form an instant’s still picture of a billion tiny glowing spheres. Simultaneous thunder shook the platform, the building, the world.

  Apparently serene amid the chaos, Sarek listened to Cartwright and the council president and Chief Medical Officer Chapel attempting to maintain some coherence among the rescue attempts. Sarek did not offer his aid, because he knew he could do nothing. No one could be evacuated from Earth because of the probe, but the probe ignored the movement of people from coastal regions to higher elevations.

  Perhaps it ignores them, Sarek thought, because it knows any such attempts to be futile. People will be saved from drowning only to freeze; people may be saved from freezing only to starve.

  He had been offered a place on a transport to the interior of the continent; he had refused.

  He found a certain irony in what had happened. In returning to Earth to plead on behalf of the man who had saved Sarek’s son’s katra, and his life, Sarek would lose his own life and soul. For he had accepted that he would die here on Earth. His katra would never be transmitted to the Hall of Ancient Thought, because no one would be left alive to accept it.

  Snow had already begun falling just a few kilometers inland. The hills to the east, like mountains, bore caps of snow. As Sarek gazed through the window, the rain driven in off the bay ceased to streak the glass and began instead to burst upon it and stick and flow in wet, slushy droplets of sleet.

  Communications within Starfleet Command continued to deteriorate. Sarek could barely make out the reflections of the screens’ blurry images. Humans scurried back and forth in futile activity. Chief Medical Officer Chapel had been on duty for nearly forty-eight hours. She slumped in a chair with her face in her hands. Fleet Commander Cartwright clenched his hands around the railing of the observation platform, tense with strain.

  Sarek had spent the past few hours preparing himself, permitting himself a moment to consider his successes and releasing his regrets. Only one remained: no reserve power could be spared, no communications channel remained clear enough, for him to transmit a message to Vulcan, to Amanda. He had written to her, but he doubted she would ever receive his message. All he wished to tell her must remain forever unsaid.

  “Sir!” Janice Rand turned toward Cartwright. Her rain-streaked image wavered in the glass. “I’m picking up a faint transmission—it’s Admiral Kirk!”

  “On-screen!” Cartwright said.


  Sarek turned from the shadow world of the reflections to the real world behind him. The blurry image on the screen was hardly sharper than its reflection, and Kirk’s words came through utterly garbled. The picture faded to nothingness, to a resonance of the probe.

  “Satellite reserve power,” Cartwright said. “Now.”

  The screen flickered, cleared, blurred. Sarek made out Kirk’s form, and the control boards of the Klingon fighter ship…and the vague silhouette behind him, unmistakably of a Vulcan, unmistakably Spock. Kirk said something, but static muffled his words.

  He is coming to Earth, Sarek thought. All ships have been ordered away. But instead of obeying, he will come. He has been ordered to Earth. But instead of disobeying, he will come.

  James Kirk was incapable of standing by while his homeworld died. But Sarek also knew that there was no logical way to save it. The Klingon ship would face the probe and be destroyed. So, too, Kirk and all his companions would die.

  “Analysis,” Kirk said. His voice rose and faded in the static and the resonance. A strange cry whistled and moaned in the background. For a moment Sarek thought it was the probe, and then he realized it was not. “Probe call…Captain Spock’s opinion…extinct species…humpback whale…proper response…”

  His voice and image both failed, but Sarek had already gleaned Spock’s explanation of the probe’s intent and desire. A bright stroke of pride touched the elder Vulcan’s equanimity.

  “Stabilize!” Cartwright exclaimed. “Emergency reserve!”

  “Do you read me?” Kirk said clearly. His image snapped into focus, then immediately deteriorated. “Starfleet, if you read, we are going to attempt time travel. We are computing our trajectory…”

  “What in heaven’s name—?” the fleet commander said.

  The power failed utterly.

  “Emergency reserve!” Cartwright said again, his voice hoarse.

  “There is no emergency reserve,” the comm officer said.

  The groan of tortured glass and metal cut through the scream of the wind and the pounding of rain and waves. Sarek understood what Kirk proposed to do. Somehow, in the madness of its desperation, the plan possessed an element of rationality.