STAR TREK: TOS/TNG - Federation

by Judith

  But he was here now. For whatever reason, fate and the universe had conspired to keep him moving forward, to bring him to this moment while others were left behind. His whole life could be viewed that way, he knew. For whatever reason, he had had experiences and adventures of which humans of centuries past could not conceive, and which humans of centuries to come could never repeat. If he considered the progress of his life that way, he was content.

  Picard opened his eyes and gazed upon the unchanging face of Zefram Cochrane. He found it comforting.

  Five years had passed since the scientist had come aboard the Enterprise for his final voyage among the stars. His body had been returned here since, and lay buried deep within the soil of Titan, with the granite of Earth his marker, this bronze statue his monument.

  Picard read the plaque inset in the stone. The numerals giving his date of death were brighter than the other letters in the metal, attesting to how recent their addition had been.

  Picard heard familiar footsteps approaching, so easily recognized after eight years.

  “Hello, Will,” he said a moment before Riker spoke.

  He could hear the smile in Riker’s voice as he replied. “Captain.”

  They stood together, gazing up through the dome, seeing what Cochrane would see forever—the stars, brightly flickering through Titan’s cleansed atmosphere, a jeweled band around Saturn’s majesty. This moon of Saturn was still far too cold for anyone to venture out without an environment suit, but the citizens of Titan had begun a geothermal venting project, and in a few more centuries, who knew? This whole park might be open to the night sky. Picard wondered what Cochrane would have thought of that.

  “A most remarkable man,” Riker said.

  “A most remarkable life,” Picard agreed.

  They remained together in silence, contemplating the monument and what it represented. For all that they had been captain and first officer for eight years, for all that they did not know what the future would hold for them now, they were friends, and the silence between them was as meaningful as any conversation.

  In time, another set of footsteps approached, ones that Picard did not recognize. He and Riker turned together.

  The visitor was a Vulcan in a red Starfleet uniform and short-cropped hair. She was approaching middle age for her species, no more than one hundred Earth standard years. The attaché case she carried was embossed with the emblem of the Starfleet Archives.

  “Captain Picard?” she asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Forgive me for intruding.” She opened the case and removed a clear aluminum cylinder. Fixed inside there appeared to be an old-fashioned envelope. Made from real paper, it seemed.

  Picard was immediately intrigued by the object, even more so when the Vulcan handed it to him. “This is for you, sir.”

  [453] Picard held the cylinder in his hands, turning it to read the careful handwriting on the envelope inside. “What is it?”

  “It is a personal communication, sir. A letter. Deposited in Starfleet Archives one hundred standard years ago.”

  “I don’t understand,” Picard said. “How could it be for me?” There was no name on the envelope, just a series of handwritten dates and coordinates.

  “The letter is addressed to the commander of the Starfleet vessel who took part in a special recovery operation within the event horizon of TNC 65813, on or about stardate 43926.”

  Picard felt a sudden chill of recognition as he heard the Vulcan speak. Those words were exactly what was written on the outside of the envelope, and the time and place they referred to had never been far from his mind. Picard’s eyes met those of the Vulcan. He dared not ask the question he knew he must. The potential answer was more than he should hope for.

  “The letter was contained in a personal log vault, marked for release this year. The person who deposited it was apparently following Starfleet regulations regarding the temporal transmission of information in other than a causal manner.”

  “In other than a causal manner ...” Picard repeated as he realized what he might be holding. “And the person who deposited this letter?”

  The Vulcan nodded her head slightly, a subtle sign of respect for the name she spoke. “James Tiberius Kirk, sir. At the time it was written, Admiral, Starfleet Command.”

  Picard slowly drew in a breath of anticipation, surprise, wonder, he wasn’t sure which. In the years since his ship and crew had recovered Cochrane, he had had the opportunity to discuss the incident within the event horizon with Ambassador Spock, and with Montgomery Scott when he had come aboard the Enterprise. But when Picard had spoken with Kirk on Veridian III, even at the time he had been overwhelmed by the feeling that there was so much more they should be saying to each other, so much more they had to share, even beyond the events of TNC 65813. But time had been too short, it was always too short. Like a law of nature.

  [454] The cylinder seemed to float in Picard’s hand. The envelope within seemed to glow.

  “I met him once, sir,” the Vulcan said. “Admiral Kirk. Captain Kirk,” she amended. “After he had retired. At the Ellison Research Outpost.”

  “Did you?” Riker replied, saving Picard the pain of describing the circumstances of his own meeting with Kirk on Veridian III.

  “A most remarkable man,” the Vulcan said.

  “A most remarkable life,” Riker agreed.

  The Vulcan nodded, her silence acknowledging how little words could convey about some subjects. She closed her case. “The cylinder is filled with nitrogen,” she explained. “It would be best if, after opening it, you used archival storage methods for the letter inside. I would be pleased to provide the latest guidelines at your convenience.”

  Picard thanked the Vulcan and she departed.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to open it?” Riker asked.

  Picard ached to do exactly that. But he said, “Not here, Will. Up there. Where his words belong.”

  Riker smiled softly as he nodded. “I understand.”

  Picard held the cylinder as Cochrane held the laurel branch, as if it were the frame of something much bigger, unseen, still in the future. “The three ages of the Federation,” he said softly. “Cochrane, Kirk, and us.” The envelope was fat. The letter inside must be long, rich with detail, with ... who knew what secrets there were to be shared only by those who commanded starships?

  “I wonder what the next ages will bring?” Picard asked. “And to whom they’ll bring it?”

  For a moment, he could almost hear the stars answer him.

  THE ARTIFACT

  New Stardate γ 2143.21.3

  The ship moves through domains of space unimagined by Cochrane, powered by engines incomprehensible to Scott or La Forge. But all three engineers would recognize its destination, deep within the voids between the galaxies.

  The captain of the ship holds up her hand to the main bridge view wall and with her thumb blots out the Milky Way as it recedes from her, sidewarp factor 55.

  “Beacon signal converging as predicted,” her data officer announces. “Dropping to warp speed.” The ship slows to a relative crawl as the main viewer switches to the forward scan. Against a sprinkling of distant galaxies, one blue beacon stands out as the ship closes. “Moving to sublight ... and relative stop.”

  The ship hangs tens of millions of light-years from any star, from any matter larger than a grain of dust, except for the silver structure dead ahead, the structure whose presence was made known to them by sidespace radio after the final inauguration ceremony and all spacefaring cultures in the Milky Way had been joined in one grand Federation. That, so the current theory went, had been the trigger for the invitation.

  The translator tanks identify markings on the side of the structure as consistent with similar markings recorded on so-called [456] Preserver artifacts. The Cochrane delta is there among them. Science tanks confirm that the radiation signature is consistent with postulated controlled-access corridors to multiple universes. The captain sh
akes her head in amazement. “Multiple universes,” she says to her data officer, the words, the entire concept, still unreal to her. The data officer holds his hands ready over the control surfaces. “Do we accept the invitation, Captain?”

  The captain stares into the beckoning doorway of the silver structure between the galaxies, contemplating an infinite ocean of time and space into which life could expand, its fate no longer tied to a single world, a single galaxy, or now, even a single universe.

  “Helm, full ahead,” she orders. “Let’s see what’s on the other side.” Like another explorer centuries before her, who stood on the brink of an equal adventure, her eyes blur with tears even as she laughs, the reason for either response a mystery to her, rooted deep in that which makes her human.

  In the language of the time, the ship is called Enterprise, and she slides forward, accepting the invitation, once more going where none has gone before.

  For even here, even now, the adventure is still just beginning. ...

  EPILOGUE

  ON THE EDGE

  OF FOREVER

  ELLISON RESEARCH OUTPOST

  Stardate 9910.1

  Earth Standard: ≈ Late September 2295

  Kirk took his hand from the Guardian and for a moment felt as if he had forgotten how to breathe.

  The Guardian seemed to spin around him. Vortices of stars. Images of gateways unimaginable. Paths and possibilities and multiple universes—

  “Captain?”

  He became aware of the Vulcan standing close to him. The impossibly young lieutenant commander with the tricorder slung against her hip. He had not heard her approach over the duraplast sheeting.

  “Did you require something, sir?”

  Kirk tried to answer but his throat was dry as dust, as if he hadn’t spoken for days. It struck him that he had no idea how long he had been standing by the Guardian, listening to ... to what?

  “How—” He coughed to clear his throat and began again. “How long have I been here?” he asked. He glanced over his shoulder to see the Vulcan attempt to hide her concern.

  “Beside the Guardian, sir?”

  “Touching it,” Kirk said.

  [460] The Vulcan’s hand played over her tricorder. Kirk could see she was struggling with her desire to turn it on.

  “Only a moment, sir,” she said. “I thought you said something to me so I came back and ...” She fixed him with an expression of curiosity that was more familiar to Kirk than she would ever know. “Sir, did ... something happen?”

  Kirk shook his head. He could say that he had asked a question and the Guardian had answered, but whatever had been related had apparently been only for him.

  If it had happened at all.

  Kirk closed his eyes again and the myriad images the Guardian had somehow shown him burst across his mind’s eye as if a dam had burst.

  ... as if a dam had burst ...

  He heard the echo of Micah Brack saying those words to ... to ... Zefram Cochrane? Had it really been Cochrane he had seen, there on Titan? Was Brack really Flint, the immortal human Kirk had met so many years ago? Or had some trick of the Guardian, some alien static charge somehow flashed through him, weaving together his own disparate memories of forty-five years in Starfleet, creating an illusion, nothing more?

  Kirk heard the Vulcan switch on her tricorder, heard it scanning, and made no move to stop her. He had no idea at all how much of what he had seen, experienced, imagined, been shown, was real. Perhaps the tricorder would have an answer.

  “Is anything different?” Kirk asked.

  “No, sir.” Kirk’s trained ear could hear her disappointment, though few others who were not from her world could have done the same.

  Kirk held his hands together, squeezing his fingers. The hand that had touched the Guardian felt stiff, as if he had held a position too long, for centuries.

  Then he realized he had felt this way before.

  Ten years ago, in San Francisco, when Sarek had come to his apartment seeking information about Spock, his son.

  Kirk had undergone a mind-meld with the ambassador that night, and the aftereffects had been much the same as what he [461] felt now—memories not his own colliding with half-remembered dreams from all the other minds Sarek had touched in his life.

  The other captain had felt the same way, Kirk suddenly remembered. The other captain in the other ship, the other Enterprise.

  For an instant he had an impression of that other captain, standing by a monument of ... of ... it was gone as quickly as that.

  Kirk rubbed his hands across his face, as if waking from a long sleep. The tricorder still trilled behind him but he suddenly felt certain that it would discover nothing.

  Had he really seen a past he could never have known? Had he really seen a future that he would never be part of? A future now seventy years distant, a thousand years distant? Was there a difference in whatever time stretched on beyond his own years? Could he believe anything he had seen or was it all just an indulgent dream of self-justification?

  Sarek would know, Kirk thought. He felt certain that the ambassador’s thoughts were somehow woven through all of this, as if through the Guardian the normal limits of space and time and causality had been sundered and a mind-meld of a different order had occurred, between Kirk, between the other captain, between the Guardian itself, all minds linked by some agency unknown.

  He tried to recapture the details, but they were lost in the tapestry the Guardian had woven for him, until he only saw the larger pattern, the grand design.

  The need for life to continue.

  The certainty that life would.

  Above the gentle wind, the subtle silence of the ancient stones, Kirk heard faint, familiar music play.

  He turned to see two shimmering pillars of light swirl into existence upon the dust of this world. And as the figures within took shape, became whole, through a trick of the transporter nimbus that surrounded them, he seemed to see them as they had been almost three decades ago.

  Commander Spock. Dr. McCoy.

  [462] At the beginning of their adventure.

  Then the transporter effect vanished and his friends as they were now came for him.

  McCoy stood by his captain’s side and stared at the Guardian. Spock nodded politely to the young lieutenant commander and then it was as if she did not exist.

  “Captain Sulu sends his regards, Captain. The Excelsior is at your disposal.”

  Kirk took a last look at the Guardian.

  “C’mon, Jim. It’s time to go home.” McCoy reached out to touch Kirk’s shoulder.

  “I know,” Kirk said, “I know,” and with his friends at his side, he walked to the edge of the sheeting, stepped again onto the soil of this world, and readied himself for what would happen next. Whatever it would be.

  The story that the Guardian had shared still resonated within him, and even as the details fled, he was left with what he had always known—that his journey would be ending soon.

  But he realized at last that one thing had changed—perhaps the Guardian’s gift—the new recognition he had that though his journey would be ending soon, the journey itself would never end.

  However small, that knowledge made a difference.

  Kirk stood between his friends. Held the communicator. The last time for so many things.

  But not for everything.

  “Kirk to Excelsior,” he said. “Three to beam up.”

  The gentle chime of the transporter claimed them then, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, and together they dissolved into the quantum mist and were swallowed by the light.

  The young Vulcan stared a moment into the space the three legends had occupied. Looked at their footprints in the ancient dust, then shook her head as if suddenly chiding herself that what she thought wasn’t logical.

  She turned her back on the Guardian and walked to the research huts.

  Alone once more in its solitude, the Guardian watched her go, [463] waiting patiently, silently, a
s it had for eons, until another would come who was worthy to ask it a question.

  It would be a long wait, the Guardian knew. But eventually another would come.

  There was so much of the story still to be told. And not even the Guardian knew how it would end.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We first proposed Federation to our then editor, Dave Stern, in a letter dated May 18, 1987. At the time, with The Next Generation still in preproduction, the idea of involving Captain Kirk in events spanning hundreds of years of Federation history was considered to be a bit ambitious, and we went on to other proposals.

  Over the years, Federation made its way to the publisher and to Paramount in several different revisions, in long outlines and short outlines, and was consistently turned back, not with the judgment “No way,” but with the comment “Not yet.”

  Finally, in a refreshing turnabout, from the writer’s point of view, five years after we had first suggested Federation, the publisher called us and asked if we would like to resubmit once more because the time was finally right.

  Would Gene Roddenberry have approved of this mixture of his two creations, not only in this novel but in the Next Generation episodes “Unification, Parts I and II,” “Relics,” and the motion picture Star Trek: Generations?

  We think so, and here’s why.

  Of all the many STAR TREK projects that might have been, truly one of the most unusual and intriguing would have been the “Star Trek Opera,” conceived as an event to commemorate STAR TREK’s twenty-fifth anniversary. In the opera’s very preliminary stages, Gene Roddenberry reviewed our STAR TREK novel Prime Directive, and a Next Generation comic book story we had written, and approved us to write the opera’s “book.” As for the story the opera would tell, Gene Roddenberry had said in the summer of 1990 that it [466] was time to bring the crews together, and the opera would be an opportunity to do so.