Star Trek: The Original Series - 162 - Shadow of the Machine

by Scott Harrison

  Four bolts of plasma energy explode from the tips of the cylindrical spires and race toward the Enterprise.

  The first bolt strikes the ship just above engineering, tearing the entire aft section away from the saucer, causing her to go into a tailspin. The second and third bolts scream past, missing the spiraling ship by mere meters. The fourth bolt skims across the skin of the saucer section, ripping up the exterior panels as it goes, exposing the decks beneath to the harsh subzero temperatures of space.

  And now the Enterprise is diving . . .

  Down.

  Down.

  Down through the thin halo of Earth’s upper atmosphere, dragging a fiery tail behind it like some immense comet.

  On the viewscreen San Francisco is in flames—his home, his family, his friends, all in ruins—destroyed by V’Ger’s orbital bombing. The Golden Gate Bridge is gone; nothing is left but twisted lumps of severed metal. The waters that separate the San Francisco and Marin Peninsulas are a writhing cauldron of smoke and vapor.

  Sulu clings desperately to the arm of his chair as the ship begins to shake itself apart around him.

  And above it all, the sound of someone screaming and screaming and screaming . . .

  And Sulu suddenly realizes that it is him.

  SAN FRANCISCO

  At first he didn’t know where he was.

  When Sulu snapped awake from the nightmare, the darkness was so unexpected, and so absolute, that it caused him to panic momentarily. He pulled himself quickly into a sitting position, clawing frantically at the bare boards beneath him.

  The overhead lights sprang on, bathing the room in a soft, amber glow.

  He was in San Francisco, Susan’s apartment.

  He must have fallen asleep, and the computer had automatically cycled down the lights when it had detected no activity after forty minutes. He made a mental note to reset the autofunction.

  Sulu wiped a shaking hand across his forehead and felt the cold sheen of sweat that coated his skin.

  That was four nights in a row that he’d had that dream, and it was always the same.

  No, that wasn’t strictly true.

  It always started the same way, but this was the first time the Enterprise had been destroyed. Usually they were able to turn tail and run before V’Ger was able to fire its plasma energy bolts, but not this time, not tonight.

  And that wasn’t the only thing that had been different: This time V’Ger had behaved differently.

  Before it had just been a cloud that attacked the Federation fleet, but tonight it had revealed itself to him. Not the actual nucleus—the NASA spacecraft that had originally been known as Voyager 6—but the entire machine entity that the inhabitants of the Machine Planet had built around it: the thing that had become V’Ger.

  He hated having this dream. It was one of the reasons he didn’t want to come back to the apartment.

  One of many reasons.

  It had taken him a few minutes to flag down a taxi outside the Starfleet Medical facility, but once aboard he’d fished out his Starfleet ID and fed it into the driver interface.

  “Good evening, Lieutenant Commander Hikaru Sulu. Please state your destination.”

  “1738 Ocean Avenue.” Sulu paused, before adding, “And take the scenic route.”

  “Scenic route? Please clarify.”

  Sulu sighed. “It means I’m not in any hurry to get there.”

  The taxi driver was a machine and didn’t understand his intentions. It took the most direct route and dropped him outside the apartment building in a mere ten minutes.

  He considered not going inside straightaway, perhaps going for a walk up toward Junipero, maybe even stopping off at a bar along the way. But it was starting to get cold and a tangle of fog was rolling in off the bay, so he thought better of it.

  Sulu wasn’t convinced that he was going to get into the apartment at first. The security system’s retina scanner seemed to be acting up, and it took Sulu several attempts before the computer accepted his retinal print and opened the front door.

  It was cold inside the apartment, and there was a faint whiff of lubrication wafting out of the air filters, making him think of the engineering section on board the Enterprise.

  There was something lying on the ground, just inside the door, causing Sulu to stumble and almost trip as he fumbled his way clumsily through the dark.

  The computer, detecting his presence, activated the overhead lights, illuminating the length of the hallway and piping in a selection of calming music through the speakers.

  “Music off!” Sulu ordered, snatching up Susan’s carelessly discarded shoes from the floor and tossing them into the hall closet.

  Just like Susan, Sulu thought with a smile. Never puts her shoes away in the closet. No matter how many times he had asked her to.

  “Good evening, Hikaru,” the computer chimed in cheerfully. “There are fifteen messages awaiting your attention. Would you like me to play them for you?”

  “Definitely not.” Sulu was in no mood to be answering a lot of questions about Susan and the baby at this time of night, even if they were well meaning.

  Sulu padded down the hallway, heading for the living room, when he stopped suddenly outside an open door. The lights were off, but the shutters on the windows must have been open, for moonlight spilled into the room, throwing a spotlight upon the only piece of furniture that currently occupied it.

  He hesitated, looking away toward the hall table, the coat stand, the closet—anywhere, as long as he wasn’t looking at that thing sitting on the floor in there.

  Sulu glanced back in through the doorway again. It was still there.

  A voice inside his head was screaming, Do you really want to be doing this? I mean, now, of all times?

  He knew it was a really bad idea even as he reached out and placed a hand on the door, pushing it open the rest of the way.

  When the overhead lights flickered on, revealing the half-finished nursery, Sulu was almost blinded by the whiteness of the newly painted walls. The last time he’d been here, this had still been what Suze called the laundry room.

  Laundry room. Yeah, right.

  It always made him smile to hear her call it that. Susan liked to give names to everything. There’d been nothing in the room except for a cleaner and an old fold-out table; there was little room for anything else.

  But the room looked different now, bigger, definitely cleaner. Susan had been busy while he was away.

  Standing dead center was the crib, the one her parents had given them as a gift not long after Susan had told them she was pregnant. There was a teddy bear sitting inside.

  Sulu reached in and picked up the toy. He sat down on the bare nursery floor, with his legs crossed and his back against the front panel of the crib.

  That’s when the tears came.

  For a while he just sat there, with the bear in his hands, letting the tears come. Sulu thought that if he tried to stem them, he’d just burst like a dam and he’d only have to go through it all again. Most probably in a hospital, in front of Susan, and that’s the last thing either of them needed right now. Susan would be tired and emotional too; she needed his support.

  And the baby. She needed to feel that they were there for her. She wouldn’t understand it, not on any conscious level, but instinctually, she’d know.

  Sulu lifted his head from the crib and stared up at the smooth, featureless surface of the ceiling. It too was newly painted, white and gleaming, just like the walls.

  He knew that he wouldn’t be able to close his eyes and sleep, not tonight. If he did, then all he would see would be that tiny, fragile baby lying motionless in the incubator. The only indication that she was alive, that she was fighting for her life, was the steady, almost imperceptible rise and fall of her chest.

  She needed him.
r />   Susan needed him.

  And in two weeks he was going to leave. Board the Enterprise and disappear out of their lives for five years.

  Did that make him a bad father? A bad husband?

  His mama, Demora Sulu, had been the first female Starfleet officer to be given command of a starbase. It was a newly installed one, located near the Romulan Neutral Zone.

  One night his mother had come home a very different woman, Sulu remembered. She was ecstatic and excited. They had always been proud of Mama, especially his papa. But that night there had been something else, something that Sulu could feel mixed in with the joy and celebrations.

  At first Sulu had not understood what it was; not until much later did he realize that his mama had been frightened. Terrified, even. Not for herself, or for the two hundred plus people that would be serving under her, but for her family—especially for Hikaru.

  His mama had stepped out onto the porch and watched him play for a while, one hand resting on the railing, the other cradling what his parents used to call a “grown-up drink.”

  The sun was starting to go down and a cool breeze was drifting in off the water. His mama called him over and asked him to take a seat next to her on the bench.

  “Now, you know that Starfleet has asked Mama to run a starbase for them,” she said softly.

  Sulu nodded. He knew what that meant, all right. “Starbase 718. There’s over two hundred men and women on it. Papa told me. You’ll be able to shout at them and tell them what to do.”

  “That’s right. Although, hopefully, I won’t need to shout,” she said with a smile. “But being a starbase commander means much more than just telling people what to do. You need to be quick-thinking, and to have your wits about you at all times. You make the wrong decision, and it affects more than just you. It affects everyone, even the people back here on Earth.”

  Sulu’s eyes were wide and unblinking as he listened to his mother. “Will you have to make decisions like that, ones that affect the whole crew?”

  “Almost every day.” His mama paused here, her hand lightly stroking his hair. “It also means that I’m going to have to be away from you and Papa for a while too. The starbase is very, very far away, near a part of the galaxy where a race called the Romulans live. Do you understand?”

  Sulu nodded again. He understood what his mama meant.

  “But I don’t want you to worry. I’ll be coming back to see you and Papa as often as I can, I promise.”

  “You won’t forget about us, will you, Mama?” Sulu asked, tears spilling from his eyes and running down his face.

  And as his mama hugged him and held him tightly, he knew that she’d never forget him, ever.

  “Hikaru-bō, how could I ever forget about you?” she asked. “When you are the most beautiful and precious thing to me in the whole universe?”

  You’re right, Mama, Sulu thought now. She is the most beautiful and precious thing to me in the whole universe, and I won’t forget about her, ever. I’m sure she’ll understand why I go away, just like I understood, all those years ago.

  Eventually Sulu closed his eyes, and the image of his mama began to float away into the darkness. A few minutes later, Sulu drifted down after her.

  Somewhere, inside that darkness, V’Ger was waiting for him.

  SHIKAHR, VULCAN

  Spock felt restless whenever he returned to his parents’ home on Vulcan, and this time was no exception.

  He found his parents’ company to be quite stimulating. However, to use an inaccurate human expression, the house held too many memories for him.

  Spock had spent the last forty-five minutes walking slowly through the house. He walked through each and every room, in a set order, from the basement to the second floor, counting his footsteps as he went. It was a unique system, a technique he had developed when he was a boy for focusing his mind. The regularity and rhythm of his steps, the slowly rising count, had a calming effect upon his thought processes. It allowed him to sort through his problems with reasoned clarity.

  This morning his impending meeting with the Kolinahr master weighed heavily on his mind.

  The fact that it still took him thirteen steps to cross the kitchen, and that there were still fourteen steps up from the conservatory to the bedrooms, just as there had been that last day before he left for the Academy, didn’t help. The precise pattern, the counted steps, the steady climb to the roof, the return to his father’s library: In the past, Spock had always found clarity. However, his mind was still in a state of agitation about the meeting, and, rather than turning toward the library, Spock decided to go out on the roof terrace.

  Situated on the eastern side of the house, the terrace was a wide paved area overlooking the vast expanse of the Forge. He was not expecting to find his mother out here so early in the morning; usually she took her early morning tea and P’eltac cake in the dining room. The fact that Amanda might have been waiting for him, looking to help, did not enter Spock’s head.

  “Good morning, Mother,” Spock said, announcing himself. “I am surprised to find you up so early. I hope my own inability to sleep didn’t disturb you.”

  Amanda smiled. “Were you unable to sleep? I didn’t notice. I often come out onto the terrace. I like to catch the dawn.”

  “Indeed. The suns rising in the northern hemisphere can be most illuminating at this time of year,” Spock said.

  Amanda giggled, causing Spock to raise an eyebrow.

  “Did I say something amusing?” he asked.

  “Oh, come on, Spock. Sunrise can be ‘most illuminating’: Are you telling me you didn’t mean that as a joke?”

  He thought carefully about his words for a moment, then shook his head. “It was not meant to be a witticism. However, I can see how a double meaning could be extrapolated from the statement.”

  This time Amanda laughed long and hard, causing her son to stare at her in puzzlement for several minutes.

  “Oh, Spock, how I’ve missed you.” She patted the bench beside her. “Please, sit with me awhile.”

  Spock did as he was bidden. Amanda sipped her tea, surreptitiously studying her son.

  “Mother, may I ask you a question?” Spock asked tentatively.

  “Of course,” she told him. “You don’t need my permission. I am your mother, not your superior officer.”

  She was teasing, of course, but, as usual, it passed by Spock unnoticed.

  “You said that you have missed me.”

  “That is correct,” Amanda agreed.

  “The implication being that there has been no other adverse effects by my sudden absence,” said Spock.

  “None that spring immediately to mind,” Amanda said. “Is there anything specific you are referring to?”

  There was a slight pause, as though Spock were steeling himself. “Do you consider my abandonment of Kolinahr to be an embarrassment?”

  Suddenly Amanda turned and faced her son.

  “Oh, Spock, no,” she said tenderly. “There is nothing you could do that would be an embarrassment to me. You are my son, and I am fiercely proud of you.”

  For a moment, Spock appeared unable to speak, as though her words had moved him deeply. Then he cleared his throat, and the moment was gone.

  “If I recall correctly, it was the same when I was a boy,” he told her. “You were always the one who told me that I should be proud of my Vulcan and human heritage. I was unique, that the other boys were merely . . . envious. I always felt that my father was disappointed in me, that he would have preferred a son who was wholly Vulcan.”

  “That’s simply not true. Your father has always been proud of you, even if he hasn’t said so. It’s true that your father and I see things differently, from time to time, but that is true of any marriage.” Amanda regarded her son carefully, then said, “What are you asking me, Spock?”

>   “If you had ever seen something, experienced something, that had made you question everything you believed in, everything that you had spent your whole life striving to be: Would that mean that your life had been meaningless, wasted even?”

  The question was preposterous, illogical. Spock knew it before it had even left his lips; as such he expected his mother to instantly dismiss it. Yet Amanda considered her son’s words carefully before she answered him.

  “I remember a six-year-old boy, who was so sick of being bullied by the other boys at school, and so determined to make his father proud of him, he decided to prove that he was Vulcan by becoming a Kir’Shara scholar. The fact that one had to be ten years old to take the exam didn’t faze this little boy. He was so bright and resolute, he believed he would pass the test and be the youngest scholar ever admitted to study the Kir’Shara. The master was a kind and gentle man, and when he heard that the little boy wanted to become a scholar, to show that he was truly Vulcan, he allowed him to take the test.”

  Spock raised an eyebrow. “I fail to see the relevance of your story.”

  “Even though you weren’t accepted, it didn’t matter. Your father was so proud of you for trying.” Amanda saw the look that flashed across her son’s face and immediately waved it away. “Yes, I know, there were many disagreements over the years. Your father is proud of you, of the man you have become. You are our son, Spock, and it doesn’t matter what you do, or where you go. Nothing will ever change that. Question the things in your life, as we all do—Sarek included. It’s what helps us change, adapt, become better people.”

  “My father once questioned his own beliefs?” Spock sounded surprised.

  At first Amanda appeared a little hesitant to answer, as though fearing that she might be overreaching.

  “A long time ago. At first we were just friends walking in the Vulcan embassy grounds, or talking while exploring Golden Gate Park. Sarek never spoke of it, nor did I, but I knew what was happening. It took your father time to reconcile the feelings that he had for me. At one point I even thought that he had decided to never see me again, rather than acknowledge his love for me. But I was wrong. Sarek was working up the courage to propose to me. In public, when we were first married, he would claim our marriage was merely a ‘logical decision’ on his part: The Vulcan ambassador to the Federation was taking a human wife in order to understand humans, to come to terms with their more flamboyant eccentricities. But we knew the truth: The prim and proper, highly logical Vulcan had fallen in love. Spock, you can trust me when I say that if you find that you need to do something else, to be something different, I know your father will understand.”