"You think you're so clever," Janeway growled as she kicked off the shiny black shoes she had worn over her boots. They thudded into a dark corner of the room.
"No, but I believe you are. It shows a great deal of cleverness to devise a way to transport me from the Earth to the moon without being concerned that the authorities will track the multiple beampaths you must have used."
Janeway glared at him and Kirk understood that interference by Earth authorities was of definite concern to her. His response to that knowledge was to feel even more in control of the situation. So much so that there was not even any need for him to think of an escape strategy. Janeway's nervousness, despite her having accomplished a successful abduction, told Kirk that she was not the person in charge of whatever action was under way.
And if Janeway was just the middleman, following explicit orders, it meant she was essentially powerless.
Janeway stepped down from the transporter platform and gestured to a thick, armored pressure door. It was partially open, leading to a dark corridor beyond. From its construction, and the condition of its flaking paint, Kirk guessed they were in the abandoned service area of one of the first lunar colonies, dating back almost to Cochrane's time. He recalled that the moon had been terraformed in this new age, with its own free atmosphere and open bodies of water. Thus, the fact that he was in an area of the moon's natural low gravity suggested that he was either deep underground, below the range of the main gravity generators, or in an undeveloped region. In other words, this was a perfect location for a secret base in Earth's solar system.
"Through that door," Janeway ordered.
Kirk decided to see exactly how much latitude her orders gave her. He made no attempt to move. He only shook his head and said, "No." Then, inwardly, he smiled as he saw Janeway's expression of surprise. Kirk almost felt sorry for her. Someone should tell her how much information she gives away just by not being aware of her own reactions.
"You go out that door or I swear I'll stun you and drag you through it."
Kirk shrugged. "You could, but your commander ordered you not to." Otherwise, Kirk knew, Janeway would have stunned him at his first sign of obstruction.
Janeway looked startled, ready to blurt out a question, probably asking how Kirk could know what her commander had ordered her to do. But she didn't, showing she was capable of some self-control.
"My orders were not to hurt you . . ." She carefully aimed her phaser at Kirk. ". . . unless necessary."
Kirk had found one limit. He changed tactics to see if he could find another. "It won't be. I am willing to cooperate. But I want some assurances, first."
Janeway again gestured toward the doorway. "You're in no position to want anything."
"You haven't done this before, have you?"
Janeway stared at him, bewildered by his defiance. Kirk was clearly not behaving like a typical victim. For his own part, Kirk was finding it almost too easy to keep her off balance.
"If you mean kidnapping, no," she said. "I usually just kill people."
Kirk read the truth in her eyes. She was a soldier of sorts, but experienced on the battlefield, not in covert operations. That told him a great deal about her superiors. And that knowledge gave him the strategy he needed to take control of the situation.
"Point that phaser away," Kirk said. He used what he had always thought of as his commander's voice—the tone he used on Academy cadets when it was important that they follow orders first and understand them later.
It had the appropriate effect. Janeway automatically deflected her aim by a few inches. He had her attention.
"I know all about you, too," Kirk continued, pressing his advantage. "You and your people are in trouble." Why else would someone inexperienced in covert operations be given such an important task? "And you think I can help you." Which is why she had been ordered not to harm him. "But you don't have much time." The authorities on Earth would eventually be able to trace the multiple transporter beams that had brought him here, and Janeway and her people knew it. "And this base of yours is not secure." Which is why she had made no attempt to use her communicator since they arrived. A stray subspace transmission could help the authorities locate this place even faster. "So let's drop the theatrics, and the weapon. Since you apparently think you can convince me to help you without resorting to force, why waste time with a bluff you're not willing to carry out?"
Janeway's cheeks flushed red and she swung her arm out, directly at Kirk, thumb squeezing the phaser she held.
But Kirk didn't take his eyes from hers. Even as he stepped up to her, folded his hand around hers, and took the phaser away.
Whatever else this Janeway was, she was a good soldier. Her orders were clearly to deliver Kirk alive and unharmed. And she had followed them. Somewhere within her was a central core that understood and believed in duty and commitment.
He looked at the tiny weapon he had taken from her, pressed what he hoped was its safety lock, then slipped it inside a small pouch on his belt.
"That's better." He held out his hand. It was time to start again. "I'm Jim Kirk."
But his kidnapper was furious. She ignored his outstretched hand. He could tell she had no intention of acknowledging any sort of bond between them. She was, however, realistic enough to accept the situation. "Kathryn Janeway," she said icily.
The name seemed familiar to Kirk, but he couldn't place it.
She seemed to notice his attempt to recall her identity, didn't like it. "And I'm not who you think I am," she snapped.
"I . . . have no idea who I think you are."
"I'll bet," Janeway muttered. She stomped over to the pressure door, threw her shoulder against it to make it creak open, then gestured to the corridor outside. "Well?"
Kirk stared into the darkness. He could hear water dripping. Run off from some ancient lunar ice mine, he decided. A relic of the pre-replicator past. Teilani enjoyed reading romance novels set in the early era of colonization, and Kirk thought she'd enjoy being able to visit this place. Though he doubted it would live up to her romantic ideals. "After you," he said.
Janeway exhaled angrily, but before she could step through the doorway, a deep voice spoke from the darkness. "You may remain where you are."
And at the sound of that voice, for the first time this evening, Kirk was surprised.
A tall, thin figure, wrapped in a simple dark cloak, stepped through the open doorway. His shoulders were stooped, his left leg stiff, but his distinctive silhouette was unmistakable.
"Spock?!" Kirk said.
The familiar figure limped from the shadow of the doorway, into the flickering light of the small room.
"Yes," he said. "And no."
For an instant, Kirk felt his world turn upside down. He had seen Spock only a year ago, at Mount Seleya on Vulcan. His friend was 145, middle-aged for a Vulcan, and though he had slowed down from his days on the Enterprise, he had been fit and hearty then and should be the same now.
But this Spock before him . . . he seemed another century older at least, as if in the past year some terrible illness had claimed him.
And then one key difference between this Spock and the Spock of Kirk's memory swam into view.
Spock's beard.
An elegant goatee, pure white to match the color of his traditional Vulcan bangs.
Kirk remembered the last time he had seen Spock with a beard.
Spock, and yet, not Spock.
As if he were a reflection cast in a dark, distorted mirror.
This other Spock, this mirror Spock, raised an eyebrow at Kirk. "I see you recognize me," he said.
"How . . . could I forget?"
"Indeed." There was a tremor to this Spock, this spectre from the past. His head shook. One hand, his left, trembled. "One hundred and eight years ago, you challenged me, Captain Kirk."
The memory blazed in Kirk's consciousness. How he and McCoy, Scott and Uhura, had beamed up through an ion storm during that first five-year mission
on the Enterprise, and somehow had traded places with their counterparts in a parallel universe. A version of Starfleet had existed there, as had the Enterprise herself, staffed by duplicates of Kirk's own crew.
Yet that other dimension, that mirror universe, was different—savage, brutal, a place where Starfleet officers advanced through the ranks by assassination. A place where Starfleet did not serve a benevolent Federation, but a repressive Empire that thought nothing of wiping out an entire race in retribution for a simple ineffectual act of defiance.
In the few hours Kirk had spent in that parallel existence, he had understood the truth of it.
The Empire would not endure. Within 240 years at most, an inevitable galactic revolt would overthrow it.
"The illogic of waste, Mr. Spock," Kirk had told this other Spock then. "The waste of lives, potential, resources, time. I submit to you that your Empire is illogical because it cannot endure. I submit that you are illogical to be a willing part of it."
Kirk still remembered the impassive face of the other Spock, as he had bluntly stated to Kirk, "One man cannot summon the future."
"But one man can change the present," Kirk had insisted. He had challenged the mirror Spock to take command of the mirror Enterprise, to find a way to change the Empire from within. "What will it be?" Kirk had demanded of him. "The past or the future? Tyranny or freedom? It's up to you."
That other Spock's expression had been unreadable, his thoughts unknowable, and Kirk had never known if his challenge had been accepted or rejected.
Now, here in this abandoned storeroom on the moon, in Kirk's own universe, that other Spock studied him in the inconstant light, as if he, too, shared the same precise memories of their first brief meeting. "You told me then," the mirror Spock said, " 'In every revolution, there is one man with a vision.'"
Kirk remembered that final exchange clearly. It was one of the handful of his missions from that earlier era which had remained alive within him. So much of those early days had been routine, easily forgotten unless prompted by a review of his old captain's logs. But his experience in the mirror universe, that had been intriguing and unique, a highlight of his career. "And you told me," Kirk replied, "that you would consider what I had said."
The two men faced each other as they had more than a century ago. "I've always wondered what you decided," Kirk said.
The other Spock looked away, as if lost in memory. He licked his dry lips. "I did more than consider your words, Captain. I . . . acted upon them."
"And . . . ?" Kirk asked, though he was suddenly aware of the only logical outcome of that action, given this Spock's condition and presence in this universe.
"And because I did what you had suggested," the mirror Spock said, "the Empire did fall. . . ." His face darkened, and the shaking of his head and hand became more pronounced. "And it was replaced by one even more abhorrent."
The mirror Spock limped closer, until he was mere inches from Kirk, allowing Kirk no escape or evasion. "In my universe today, the worlds of what you call the Federation are little more than prison camps. Crushed beneath the iron fist of the Alliance—a union of the Klingon and Cardassian people. Your Earth is a dying, devastated world, stripped of resources. My Vulcan is a slave compound, her libraries burned, her treasuries of art and science ransacked and mutilated."
This Spock's eyes were deeply shadowed, as if haunted by millennia of despair. His lips were dry and cracked, the thin, almost transparent skin above his sunken cheeks mottled by pale green spiderwebs of broken capillaries. 'Tens of billions of humans and Vulcans live in abject slavery, Captain Kirk. Entire worlds have been moved from their orbits to fall into their suns as sport, extinguishing whole races and civilizations. 'Freedom' is a word which exists only as a forgotten whisper from the long-dead past. Hope is nonexistent."
The mirror Spock held a trembling finger before Kirk. It shook with age, with disease, and with outrage. "And these abominations and massacres and acts of depravity in my world—all this evil—exist because of you!"
Kirk stepped back, unable to deny his role in the horror this Spock had endured.
More than ever, he longed to return home. To Chal. To Teilani and the promise of their new life together.
More than ever, he knew that was no longer possible, and might never be again.
After a lifetime of looking to the possibilities of his future, Kirk now understood that the consequences of his past, at last and inevitably, had finally caught up with him.
SIX
"Good thing you have an artificial heart."
Picard's eyes fluttered open and he was struck first by pain, and then by the sight of one of the more colorful aliens he had seen in his years in space.
The being had a high forehead and tall, concave temples, tinged by yellow and dappled with spots, topped by a crest of auburn hair that was in turn matched by muttonchops whiskers. He also had a deep cleft in his nose and a constant twitch under one eye.
"Hello," the alien said. "I could tell you were awake from the diagnostic readings."
Picard tried to swallow but his throat was dry. His head felt thick and every pulse of his heart sent a shock of pain through his skull. He whispered, "Hello," but that was all he could manage.
"I'll bet you're thirsty," the alien said. He scurried out of Picard's sight.
Picard tried to move, despite the deep ache in all of his muscles, but soon realized he was tied down by restraints on ... he looked around, forcing his blurred vision to come into focus.
"Sickbay . . ." he croaked.
"That's right," the alien said cheerfully as he returned to Picard's medical bed. He carefully cradled a glass of water.
"Not . . . the Enterprise," Picard said as he raised his head to the glass. This sickbay was smaller. The diagnostic wall to his side was gold, not blue. He was on a Federation starship, but he didn't know which one.
"Right again," the alien said as he slipped his hand helpfully behind Picard's neck. "You're on Voyager. "
Then Picard coughed as he tasted what he thought had been water. It was incredibly sweet, such a shocking flavor that he felt his eustachian tubes close and his jaw cramp.
"No, no," the alien said, keeping the glass to Picard's lips. "Torstolian elixir. Just the thing to help overcome the effects of that Klingon toxin. I make it myself," he added proudly.
Picard forced himself to swallow rapidly, trying to keep his tongue from making contact with the hideous clear liquid. "Are you . . . the doctor?" he asked.
The alien seemed bemused by the question. He held up the glass to be sure Picard had finished its contents. "Oh, no. I'm just the cook." He smiled at Picard, though not even that expression could erase the air of sadness about him. "I'm Neelix."
"Neelix," Picard said.
"I'm a Talaxian," Neelix explained. "I don't suppose you've met someone of my species before."
Picard shook his head, and was surprised that the movement was not as painful as he had feared. Perhaps there was something to that jarringly sweet elixir after all.
Then, as if his mind was clearing with the cessation of pain, so many questions came to Picard that he had trouble sorting them out. He seemed to recall Talaxians being mentioned in the report by the Voyager's EMH. But his first priority was clear. "Where is the Enterprise?"
Neelix glanced to the side, as if expecting someone to interrupt. "As far as I know—which isn't a great deal—that ship is still beside us."
"How is her crew?" Picard didn't like the fact that there was no one else being treated in this sickbay, even though Tom Paris and his accomplices had fired toxic darts at everyone on the Enterprise's bridge.
Neelix looked away, and Picard judged him to be incapable of delivering bad news.
"Casualties?" Picard asked, fearing the answer.
"A . . . few. I think. But . . . no one tells me anything."
"Commander Riker?"
Neelix smiled apologetically as he shook his head. "I'm sorry, Captain. I don't know
him."
It dawned on Picard that Neelix was not behaving as either a captor or a guard. Which left only one other conclusion.
"You're a prisoner here, too, aren't you, Neelix?"
The alien nodded with a quick jerky motion. The twitch under his eye was continuous. He reminded Picard of a mistreated animal who expected only the worst at the hands of his owners.
"Perhaps I can help you escape," Picard offered as he applied pressure to his restraints. "If you help me."
But at once, Picard saw that whatever spirit this alien might have had, it had long been beaten from him.
"Please don't ask me that, Captain. You . . . you don't know what these people are like. What they can do."
"What people, Neelix? Commander Paris?"
Neelix leaned forward, dropping his voice to a whisper. "He's a prisoner, too. All the Terrans on board are."
Picard slumped back, trying to process this new information. "The entire crew of the Voyager, taken prisoner by Klingons and Cardassians . . . ?" It made no sense. The Klingons were allied with the Federation. And just over a year ago, they had engaged the Cardassian Union in a devastating war. How could they possibly be allies? Unless . . . Terrans?
"The Alliance," Picard whispered, in shock. "Is that who the Klingons and Cardassians are? The Alliance?"
Neelix nodded as if he wasn't quite sure how to judge
Picard's urgency. "That's right. Voyager is an Alliance vessel."
"No, she's not," Picard said. "Voyager is a Starfleet vessel that disappeared from the Alpha Quadrant five years ago. Somehow, in trying to find a fast way home, she must have been drawn into what we call the mirror universe." It all made sense to Picard now. When he had been a cadet, he had read about Captain Kirk's first encounter with that savage parallel dimension. And then, like almost every other officer in Starfleet, he had been startled when Dr. Bashir of Deep Space Nine and a Bajoran national had revisited that dimension just five years ago. Their classified logs of conditions in the mirror universe were tremendously disturbing. Starfleet had engaged the Seldon Institute of Psychohistory to determine exactly how the two universes might have diverged. If there was any chance that the fate which had befallen the Terran Empire, no matter how richly deserved, could also happen to the Federation, Starfleet wanted to be prepared.
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