“The big one out by the old dirt track?” Kirk said, without turning his attention away from the mare.
Peter nodded. “Been down for a while now. It doesn’t usually matter, but this time of year the fields are dry, so even the smallest spark can start the fires raging. That’s bad enough, but once the wind picks up like this . . .”
Kirk waited for the boy to continue, but when it became obvious that there was no more, he said, “This is quite a sanctuary you have here. When I wanted to get away from prying eyes and awkward questions, I used to come here sometimes too and talk to the horses.”
At first Peter said nothing; he just continued brushing down the stallion as though his uncle had not spoken.
“Of course, it wasn’t just the adults. I also had an older brother who would tease me to the point of distraction whenever he was in the mood,” Kirk continued. “Sometimes it made me feel like the loneliest person in the world. Silly, isn’t it? Here I was, surrounded by family, animals, and friends, and yet there were times when it was almost as if there was no one that I could talk to, no one who could understand me, understand who I was, what I wanted to be.”
“But you grew up and became a famous admiral in Starfleet,” Peter said, still not looking up.
“And you’d think it would all suddenly change, wouldn’t you? That suddenly everyone magically understood you, and all that loneliness and insecurity would just melt away, faster than ice in the desert.” Kirk held his arms out, indicating the barn around him. “And yet here I am, seeking sanctuary in this old barn as I once did, hiding away from my friends and colleagues, and talking to horses. So much for the famous Starfleet admiral.”
“But you saved us all, didn’t you?” Peter asked. “You saved Earth from destruction by V’Ger.”
“But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a price to pay,” Kirk said sadly. “Trust me, there usually is in situations like that.”
“You mean Commander Decker and Lieutenant Ilia?” Peter asked.
“Yes,” Kirk said. “But I began paying the price long before V’Ger.”
Now he had Peter’s full attention. Slowly, the boy lowered the grooming brush in his hand, the horse’s coat all but forgotten.
“Were you scared?”
The question came completely out of the blue, catching Kirk off-guard. He turned away from the white-and-gray mare, looking across at his nephew.
“Scared?”
“When V’Ger came,” Peter explained. “Yours was the only ship Command sent to intercept it. There was no one else, just the Enterprise. You must have been scared.”
Just for a second, Kirk was back on the bridge of the Enterprise, his hands raised in front of his face, the light and heat from the V’Ger probe almost unbearable as it slowly twists and swirls around the bridge crew like a mini-tornado, searching, probing, learning. The probe tries to drain the computer banks, ripping out every file, every technical schematic and Starfleet communiqué it can find. Spock steps forward and smashes the station, effectively starving the probe of knowledge.
Then it turns, spinning and gyrating its way across the bridge to Ilia at the navigation station. It reaches out a tentative tongue of energy, tasting the biological makeup of the carbon-based life-form in front of it. Frightened, the Deltan turns and tries to run, but the probe reaches out again, freezing her in her tracks. It has decided that it needs her, that V’Ger needs the creature’s knowledge, its likeness.
The probe begins to pulse sickeningly. There is a blinding flash of light.
Kirk blinked several times, in a desperate attempt to dislodge the image from his mind’s eye. He looked at his nephew. “Yes, I was scared.”
“That you were going to die?” Peter asked.
“No. Scared that my crew might die if I did the wrong thing, gave the wrong order,” Kirk told him. “I knew the Enterprise was all that stood in V’Ger’s way. Everyone was depending on me to do the right thing. That was infinitely more terrifying than facing your own mortality.”
“I couldn’t do that. That’s what Uncle Abner doesn’t understand. He thinks I’ve lost interest, that I’ve no ambition, but he’s wrong. I want to do these things, I really do, I’m just . . .” Peter stopped.
Kirk finished the sentence for him. “Scared?”
“Before Deneva, before my parents were killed, I used to see everything as an exciting adventure—all those other worlds, those other life-forms and civilizations. My father used to say that there are as many new worlds with new, undiscovered life walking on their surfaces as there are grains of sand on the beach. I used to find that the most exciting thing ever. But now it just frightens me. They frighten me.”
“Starfleet prepares you, trains you, and gives you the experience that you need to be able to go out there,” Kirk offered.
“When my father was posted to a new planet he’d always come home, sit us down, and talk for hours about the new things we’d see there and all the new people we’d meet,” Peter said. “For me it was the most exciting time of my life. I knew, even from an early age, that I wanted to be an explorer just like my father.” A sudden sadness filled his eyes. “Then we joined the colony on Deneva and those neural parasites killed everyone. I’ve never been so scared in my whole life. I thought I was going to die. Then the Enterprise turned up, you saved . . . You took me onto the bridge and sat me in the captain’s chair, in your chair, and just being on a starship made me feel so safe and secure. I knew that I had to join Starfleet. But when V’Ger came, it reminded me of those parasites, and how my family died. There’re all these different creatures out there who just want to hurt and kill for no other reason than they can. I don’t want to be a part of that, not now, not ever.”
Knowing that he would have to choose his next words with extreme care, Kirk said, “I’m not going to lie to you, Peter. There are life-forms that will do anything, justify any action, in their attempt to destroy everything that we hold dear. But that’s just a tiny fraction. Our universe holds wonders and beauty that are just waiting to be discovered. One of my best friends is what could be called a creature from ‘out there.’ If it wasn’t for him and his compassion and kindness, I wouldn’t be alive. Without our friendship with the Vulcans and the other members of the Federation, our lives would be so different than they are today. The Andorians stood by our side during the Romulan War. You know this, Peter: ‘Aliens’ have made our lives better. They’ve strengthened the Federation, opened up countless wonders to us. There’ll always be a neural parasite or a V’Ger entity for us to deal with, but they only serve to remind us how important Starfleet is. We extend the hand of friendship on behalf of the Federation to everyone we meet. It’s who we are.”
Kirk stopped, taken by the enormity of his own words. This hardly sounded like a man who, for the past ninety-six hours, had been doubting his abilities.
He had told himself that what had happened to Ilia was not his fault, that she had just been a victim of circumstance. He had no way of knowing exactly what that energy probe was, nor how to stop it. Everyone had assumed that it was nonhostile, that it had been sent by V’Ger to scan the Enterprise’s memory banks and then return with the information about Starfleet and Earth. But then V’Ger had arbitrarily decided that assimilating one of the ship’s crew into the machine’s consciousness would be a better way to understand carbon-based life-forms.
Will Decker, on the other hand, was a different matter entirely.
Kirk knew he was at fault. Yes, Decker was guilty of disobeying a direct order, but Kirk was guilty of allowing him to do so.
Maybe Spock was right: Maybe he’d made the correct decision, or the only decision he could have made. If he’d made Decker return to the Enterprise, forcibly removed him from V’Ger, from Ilia, would he have thanked him for it? Would Decker have seen it as saving his life? Or as just one more thing that Admiral Kirk had selfishly taken away from him
?
First the Enterprise, then Ilia.
“Jim, I want this. As much as you wanted the Enterprise, I want this.” Those had been Decker’s final words before being absorbed by the V’Ger entity.
Had Decker been referring to Ilia, or V’Ger?
“Sometimes making unpleasant decisions is unavoidable,” Kirk told his nephew, still thinking about Will Decker. Had he decided not to fight Decker because the sacrifice would save them all?
“The Academy teaches you, and you learn how to accept the burden of your decisions and how to live with the consequences. Serving in Starfleet opens you up to wonder. You’ll know the joy of discovery, the things you lost when your parents were killed.
“Maybe you should stop fearing the leap, and just take it.”
Chapter 7
SAN FRANCISCO
After breakfast Sulu decided to check the fifteen messages that were waiting for him.
There was one from Uhura and Chekov, sending their love to Susan and the new baby—which at least cheered him up.
“If it’s a boy you should call him Pavel,” Chekov suggested. “A good strong name: Pavel Sulu.”
In response, Sulu could hear Uhura slapping him on the arm, saying, “You can’t call a child Pavel Sulu, it sounds like a cake.”
One was from his mama and papa in Okinawa. The rest were from his aunts and uncles. More people he seldom saw, because of duty or distance.
Sulu told the computer to answer all of the aunt and uncle messages with “Thank you for your kindness. Susan and the baby are doing fine. I will get back to you soon.” He told the computer not to answer his parents: He’d reply to them personally when he got back to the apartment that night.
Then Sulu washed, shaved, and changed his clothes before catching a taxi across to the Starfleet Medical facility.
This time he made his way straight to the new wing and gave his name to the person behind the desk, who told him that Susan was now awake and visiting their daughter down in the NICU.
Sulu had not been expecting this. He thought he’d have to take a seat again and wait for the doctor, and only after talking about Susan’s condition would he be allowed to see her.
He remembered the way from last time. Straight down the corridor, down two flights of stairs, and then immediately to the left. He took his time, rehearsing what he was going to say to Susan as he went.
What if she blamed herself for their daughter’s premature arrival? How the hell do you tell someone who has been carrying another life around inside them for the past three months, feeding it, protecting it, giving it somewhere safe to grow and develop, that they’re not responsible?
Sulu stopped outside the door to the NICU and for one absurd moment considered turning right around and walking out of the hospital.
But he didn’t.
Susan was sitting in a rocker over by their daughter’s incubator, one hand gently stroking the thick mop of dark hair.
“I’ve been thinking about names for her,” Susan said as he took his place on the other side of the incubator.
Sulu looked at his daughter. “Really?”
“She needs a name, Hikaru,” Susan told him simply. “I’d hate to think that . . .” She paused, struggling to get herself under control. “She needs a name.”
For someone who had been through so much in the last twenty-four hours, Susan was showing a surprising amount of strength and determination. It was there in her eyes. He’d always admired her; right now he wished he could be more like her. Susan had gotten it from her mother, Emma Ling, who had always been a tough little cookie, real scrappy.
Sulu smiled, desperately wishing for a healthy dose of that strength right now. “Okay, so what should we call her? You said you were thinking about giving her your mom’s name, Emma. What about that, Emma?”
Susan shook her head. “Nice idea, but Philly already named her baby that. I was thinking Demora, after your mother.”
“My mother? Where did that come from?”
“I was thinking this morning that it would be a good omen to give her a strong name,” Susan said. “Seeing as she needs all the help she can get right now.”
Sulu looked down at his daughter, studying her for a long moment. Even like this, lying in the incubator amidst a web of monitors, she looked beautiful, perfect—so much so that it almost took his breath away.
“I’m just glad she hasn’t got the Sulu nose,” he said at last.
“She’s got your hair, though,” Susan said.
Sulu laughed and shook his head. “No, not fine enough to be mine. That’s my mother’s hair.”
“Well, what do you think?” his wife asked.
Sulu glanced up from the incubator and he grinned, his eyes moist. “If that’s what you want, then it’s okay with me. Demora it is.”
“Demora Emma,” Susan said.
“Demora Emma,” he echoed.
They repeated it a few more times, each time making them giggle like naughty children. When they said the name out loud like that it sounded a little strange, like saying a familiar word over and over again until it loses all meaning. It would take a little bit of getting used to, but as long as they were given the time, Sulu would be happy to wait.
“Well, what do you know, my daughter has a name,” Sulu said, and for the first time since arriving home he was happy.
VULCAN
Out on the high plateau the suns were just starting to set. The evening had been warm and still, and the ceremonial robes that Spock was wearing were heavy and uncomfortable in the heat.
The skimmer came to rest at the foot of the temple on Mount Seleya, and Spock was immediately shown into the meditation area by a rather striking priestess.
“Have we met before?” Spock asked the priestess, once they had entered the chamber and the door was closed firmly behind them.
“We have,” she said, a hint of reticence in her voice. “I was once betrothed to you.”
Spock’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “You are . . .T’Pring.”
It had not been meant as a question but a statement of fact. The priestess nodded her acknowledgment.
“And the other . . . the one you chose?”
“Stonn,” the priestess informed him. “We are no longer a pair.”
“That is most unfortunate,” Spock said.
“No matter. The woman that I was has ceased to be,” she said. “I gave myself to the Kolinahr and such matters are unimportant to me.”
The priestess gestured toward the meditation stone that sat on a raised dais at the far end of the chamber.
“You will be summoned by the master in due course. Until then you may use the meditation stone to help center yourself and compose your thoughts.”
And with that, T’Pring turned and left Spock alone in the chamber.
His former bondmate’s appearance at this time was interesting, but the notion that it could be in any way coincidental was dismissed by Spock. Logic dictated that she had been tasked with greeting Spock upon his arrival, undoubtedly as a representation by the masters of what he could still achieve. To Spock, she was an example of what would never be.
Spock thought this was an emotional decision on the part of the masters, and he was curious as to why. He purposely took a seat on the bench farthest away from the meditation stone and waited for the chief acolyte to call him in. He considered his actions to be both logical and unambiguous: a protest, a measured retaliation against the decision to use T’Pring to sway him.
When the acolyte finally appeared he gestured for Spock to follow, leading him up a narrow set of stone steps to the chambers, where the master was waiting for him.
The chamber was ancient and sparsely decorated, lit only by a handful of flambeaux that hung from lanterns around the room. The walls and ceiling were hewn from the ancient ro
ck of the mountain’s interior. The impression was that they were standing inside the living body of the mountain. Seated to one side of the dancing fire pit was Master T’Sai, the old Vulcan who had acted as his personal guide throughout the Kolinahr ritual.
She motioned for him to enter and take his place on a seat opposite her.
Spock sat down in front of the fire, hands clasped neatly in his lap, and waited for Master T’Sai to speak.
“I sense a raging conflict inside you, Spock, son of Sarek,” Master T’Sai said, her stony, almost plaintive voice echoing about the ancient room. “The likes of which I have not felt since you gave yourself to Kolinahr over two years ago. You did not find the answers in the stars, as you had hoped?”
Spock raised an eyebrow. “I did indeed find answers, Master T’Sai, but there were also many questions that accompanied them.”
“That is usually the case,” T’Sai said simply. “You are not here to account for your abandoning of Kolinahr.”
There was a long moment of silence, and at last Spock shook his head.
“I left for reasons that I thought were sound at the time. To try and explain them to you now, to attempt to give any excuse for my actions, would be a waste of your time and mine.”
“You do not regret your decision?” T’Sai asked.
Spock considered his answer carefully before he spoke: “I neither regret returning to Starfleet, nor my encounter with the entity known as V’Ger.”
T’Sai nodded slowly. “As it should be. There is no disgrace in failing. Many a Vulcan has stood before me unable or unwilling to give themselves completely to logic. Sarek was one of them.”
Spock was surprised by Master T’Sai’s revelation, but he did not show it. Instead, he said, “I do believe, however, that my subsequent departure from Vulcan was hasty. In hindsight, there are certain things I would have handled . . . differently.”
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