Collision Course

by William Shatner

  Silence. Kirk stared down at the table. He wanted to run so badly he felt…he felt the icy air burn his throat again as he screamed for Donny to keep going to the arena and heard the other kids with the red bandanas calling for him, hunting him, hunting them all because of—

  “So tell me, what happened three years ago?”

  Kirk stared at the man, loathing him, loathing Starfleet, loathing everything and everyone who had brought him to this moment.

  “Because something did happen,” Mallory said.

  At seventeen, Kirk’s only weapon was defiance.

  Mallory studied him for a moment, then turned off the padd, placed it on the table. Then he got up, went to the closed doors, and punched a code into the control panel there. The door remained closed.

  Mallory took his seat again. “I turned off the imagers. Whatever we say now is just between us.”

  “Like I believe you.”

  “I’m not doing this for you, you know. I’m doing it for me. I work for Starfleet.”

  “Nice uniform,” Kirk said.

  Mallory looked down at his rumpled civilian suit. “Isn’t it,” he agreed, unruffled. Then he regarded Kirk calmly. “I have access to records SCIS doesn’t even know exist. I’ve turned off the imagers because I need to keep those records secret.”

  “And you’re going to tell them to me?”

  “You already know them.”

  Don’t say it, don’t say it, Kirk thought wildly, but he said nothing, could say nothing.

  Mallory placed his hands, palms down, on the table. “What do you know about a colony world called—”

  “Nothing!” Kirk shouted. He leapt to his feet. “This is over, all right? You wanted to find out about a stupid stolen car, you asked your stupid questions. Now let me go!”

  Mallory stayed motionless in his chair.

  “Maybe I should tell you what I know about Tarsus IV and Governor Kodos. They called him the Executioner.”

  Kirk dropped back into his chair, his legs trembling so violently he could no longer stand.

  There was nothing this man could tell him that he didn’t already know.

  He had been on Tarsus IV.

  Three years later, he was still there.

  14

  Everything was wrong. Nothing was as it should be. Instead of sun, there was darkness. Instead of laughter, there was pain. Instead of life, there was death: four thousand bodies crisped by laser fire. A week after the colony’s revolution, they lay blackened, bloated, unburied.

  And in the midst of everything that was wrong, a boy.

  His name was Jimmy Kirk and he was fourteen years old, plus a month more or less.

  Fear overwhelmed him. His legs were rubber, his stomach a tensed fist twisting his insides, his arms ice cold, and not just from the gusting snow and ice that cut through his tattered shirt with each blast of wind.

  He was being hunted, and he knew he was going to die at any moment.

  His parents, his brother, his dog, his bed, they were light-years away. And his friends?

  That’s what chilled him more than the ever-present ice and snow.

  His best friend, Matthew Caul, fourteen and two months, was the killer who pursued him.

  He’d been running and hiding and foraging for days, and knew there was no hope he could run far enough, hide well enough. Foraging didn’t matter because there was no food. He’d tried chewing dried grass dug up from the ice-covered ground, somehow managed to choke it down. But it had only made him gag and spit up harsh bile.

  That had been three days ago, he thought. Maybe four.

  That was something else that was wrong. There were no more days, no more nights, no sense of time at all. Only fear. Of his best friend. And death.

  But still he ran. Tears frozen on his grime-streaked face. Yellow mucus crusted on his reddened nose. His lips cracked and flaked with dying skin. His bare feet beyond sensation. But still he ran.

  The reason was simple. He was not alone.

  The kids from his cabin. There were four left, out of twenty-four. Tay Hébert, nine. Edith Zaglada, eight. Billy Clute, seven. Donny Roy, four.

  And since he was the oldest, he was the one in charge. That was the rule of the cabins, and the farms, and the colony.

  Jimmy had always followed the rules. Always.

  He heard shouted voices and looked up, frightened for his small charges.

  The voices came from past the old supply depot, where the frozen-mud road turned toward the center of the colony.

  He could still see tendrils of smoke oozing from charred wooden beams that once held up the depot’s roof. Three of the building’s gray brick walls were still standing, mostly, their windows blown out. Some of the adults had fought back on the night the governor had made his announcement.

  But the governor’s men had had the only guns.

  The governor’s men and the kids who’d helped them.

  “Over there! I see ’em!” The words were faint against the wind, but clear enough.

  Death was near. He had to save the children.

  He looked around wildly, then pointed to the arena. “That way!” The domed structure had once held seats for twelve hundred people. The colonists had played soccer and lacrosse there, put on plays, rode their horses, held their general meetings. Now half the building seemed to have been flattened by a giant’s fist. On the sagging roof that was left, strips of gray insulation waved in the wind like seaweed on a drowned shipwreck.

  But he’d spied a small opening in one rubble-mounded wall. Small bodies could crawl through it. Adults couldn’t.

  He ran for the dark opening, half dragging little Donny while the others stumbled after him. No one cried anymore. That had stopped a day ago. They just did what he told them to do, trusting him because there was no one else to mind and nothing else to do.

  He reached the opening first, set Donny down carefully, then launched himself through the opening. The broken blocks and mortar cut into his knees and hands, but what he’d hoped for was true. One quick glimpse confirmed that the opening was a tunnel. And it led into an undamaged part of the arena. He scrambled back to fetch the others.

  “Hurry up!” he whispered to himself as he pulled them through. “Hurry up!” Then he gagged as the stink of rotting flesh swept over him. He whirled around and wished he hadn’t.

  Bodies. All over the floor of the arena. Contorted, pleading. Carbonized.

  He covered little Donny’s eyes with his hand and used his body to shield the others. “Keep goin’! Go! Get under the stands!” Weak sunlight from outside showed the way to a hiding place under the tiered seats.

  They huddled there. Shivering. Trying not to think of the stench, and the terrors it brought back.

  “Jimm-mee! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  The challenge reverberated in the arena.

  Jimmy knew that voice. It belonged to Matthew. His best friend.

  He looked at each of the children in turn, shaking his head, and miming covering his mouth and then his ears. With wide eyes, they obeyed his call for silence but he saw their bodies shaking.

  Approaching footsteps crunched heavily over frosted ground, over rubble, over bodies.

  “We’ve got a sensor! We’re gonna find you!”

  Tay looked up at Jimmy with frightened eyes. “They know where we are,” he whispered

  It was over.

  Jimmy knew that he had failed.

  “By anyone’s reckoning, it was a disaster,” Mallory said quietly. “And the worst of it was, everyone could have survived the famine. The Vulcan relief mission and a contingent of Starfleet Security forces got there less than a month after the massacre.”

  Mallory continued, “But with no records—the colony’s processing center was destroyed—there was no way for anyone to know which of the eight thousand colonists Kodos had been before he took on that name and became governor. So everyone responsible got away: Kodos and everyone who’d helped him seize pow
er and carry out the slaughter…they all either burned to death…or escaped.”

  Kirk sat rigid, staring at nothing, no one.

  “The news spread, of course. But so much was riding on tracking Kodos—if he was still alive—that the Bureau of Colonial Affairs kept a lot of the details under wraps.”

  Kirk didn’t move.

  “Specifically, that there had been nine survivors who could identify Kodos. I think the BCA wanted to make sure they were safe from retribution.”

  Kirk said nothing.

  “Four of these eyewitnesses were small children, just kids. Three were saved by a fourteen-year-old boy.”

  Kirk made his decision. If he confessed to stealing the staff car, then Sam and Elissa would be protected. The Vulcan would be in the clear. And most important, he could get out of here.

  But Mallory’s next words caused him to hesitate.

  “Interesting thing,” Mallory said, “those witnesses’ identities are so well-protected, even I can’t get access to their names. Yet, if I could talk to that boy—and he’d be about your age today—I’d tell him he was a hero. And I’d tell him that the qualities he demonstrated on Tarsus IV are unique enough to make some people give him a second look, even grant him some extra latitude. If he ever needed help, that is.”

  Kirk started, surprised, when Mallory’s communicator chimed sharply.

  “Just a second.” Mallory flipped the communicator open. “Mallory. Go ahead.”

  Kirk tried but couldn’t hear a thing. That meant Mallory had a privacy earpiece so only he could listen to his caller.

  After a few moments, Mallory said, “Agreed,” then flipped the device shut and stood up. “Processing says you and the Vulcan have visitors.”

  Kirk pushed back his chair and got to his feet. His legs still felt unsteady, probably because of exhaustion. Though he had no idea what time it was, he knew it was well into the morning, which meant he hadn’t slept for at least thirty hours. Maybe he wasn’t completely indestructible.

  “You looked like you were going to say something there,” Mallory suggested. But when Kirk didn’t reply, he didn’t persist. He went to the door controls and entered his code. The door slid open.

  “Maybe he wasn’t a hero,” Kirk said. “That boy on Tarsus IV.”

  Mallory turned around and regarded him quizzically. “Even with what little I know, it’s pretty clear he risked his own life to save others. What would you call him?”

  “He only saved three,” Kirk said. “A lot of other kids died.”

  “Would you blame him for their deaths?”

  “No. That’s Starfleet’s fault.”

  “Go see your visitors,” Mallory said. “We’ll talk again.”

  15

  Spock sat cross-legged on the fold-down bench, hands steepled in the basic meditative form known as shal-lofee—the second foundation of inner breath. It was one of the first states of mindful balance he had achieved as a child, and he found it easy to enter even under the most disruptive of circumstances. And being locked in a holding cell in Starfleet Headquarters certainly was disruptive. He did not choose to repeat the wrenching sensation of attempting a deeper state of balance, and then being torn from it by an unexpected diversion. The one experience of that with Special Agent Rickard had been enough.

  As from a distance, he heard the holding-cell force field switch off and the security bars slide open. Spock held his position, satisfied that he had chosen the correct meditative strategy because the noise didn’t disrupt the balance he had achieved: aware, yet restful.

  And then, just as satisfaction began most improperly to turn to pride within him, he felt and heard the fold-down bench creak as a heavy mass impacted it and he was nearly pitched forward to the floor.

  Spock caught himself, barely, all sense of calm gone because of—

  Beside him. The human. Jim Kirk. Sprawled on the far end of the bench, back against the wall. He caught Spock looking at him.

  “How’s it going?” Kirk asked. From his tone, he did not expect or want an answer.

  Which was just as well because Spock had no idea what the human’s words meant. “Could you clarify the question?”

  Kirk glanced around the cell, apparently looking for something on the walls, then shifted sideways, closer. He spoke softly, as if trying to avoid illegal listening technology. “Look, I got this figured out.”

  “Indeed.” Spock was no closer to comprehending him.

  “But first I gotta know what you told them.”

  “Can you be specific? I told them many things.”

  “Great. Take me through the high, uh, points.” He glanced at something on the side of Spock’s head and gave a little snort of amusement. Spock reached up and pushed his long hair back over his ear.

  “What did you tell them about the car?” Kirk asked.

  “I know nothing about the car. Accordingly, I told them nothing.”

  “Okay, that’s good. How about the override?”

  “You put that in my pocket.”

  “Okay, and I said I stopped you from trying to put it in mine. So we balance out there.”

  “Except, my statement is truthful and your statement is a lie.”

  Kirk seemed to think that wasn’t an important distinction. “Vulcans never lie?”

  “Never,” Spock lied.

  “Okay, forget that stuff. It’s not important anyway. Here’s how it’s going to work out.” Kirk glanced at the door where the security bars were once again in place and the force-field emitters glowed around the frame. “These clowns can’t—”

  “I saw no clowns,” Spock interrupted.

  Kirk stared at him in silence for a moment, then began again, speaking slowly, as if he doubted Spock’s command of human language.

  “The SCIS agents can’t figure out which one of us was involved with the missing staff car. And since they can’t pin the crime on either one of us, they have to let us both go. Simple, right?”

  Spock thought it over. The legal system on this planet was predicated on the principle that no innocent party should suffer, even if it meant some guilty parties might go free. Under those conditions, Jim Kirk had reached a valid conclusion. “Quite logical,” Spock said. He was surprised the human was capable of such reasoning.

  Kirk grinned, punched him on the shoulder. “That’s what I said.”

  Spock drew back, startled. “You said no such thing. Why did you hit me?”

  Kirk looked at his fist. “That wasn’t a hit. That was…a playful tap. Congratulations…because our team’s gonna win.”

  Spock began to feel uneasy, almost nervous. For whatever reason, after the human’s initial display of logic, he was now reverting to spouting gibberish.

  Even more surprising, the human indicated he had sensed Spock’s true reactions, though Spock felt sure he had not betrayed emotions. Kirk shifted down the bench. “I apologize for the punch. It’s a human thing. No offense.”

  “None taken.” Spock did not know what to think. He felt sure he had not betrayed his emotions.

  “But we are going to get out of this.”

  “Good,” Spock said.

  “You said it.”

  Before Spock could correct that statement, Kirk closed his eyes and leaned back against the hard wall with both hands behind his head.

  When Spock had decided the human had calmed down sufficiently, he said, “I do have one question.”

  Kirk opened his eyes. “Shoot.”

  “I have no weapon.”

  Kirk closed his eyes again and Spock wondered if he needed more rest. “Figure of speech, Stretch. What’s the question?”

  “I am curious about the clowns.”

  For some reason unfathomable to Spock, Kirk started laughing.

  Spock concluded such a reaction must stem from something the aforementioned clowns had done earlier, and felt a strange mixture of curiosity and revulsion.

  To a Vulcan, the idea that a specific class of performers existe
d whose sole purpose was to elicit from their audience an intensely personal emotional response in public was repugnant, but to Spock, it was also strangely fascinating. He often wondered what his response to a clown might be. One possibility was that such an encounter might confirm his mastery of self-control, and he would not laugh. But another, more troubling possibility was that he would lose all Vulcan reason and his human half would rise unbound to the surface of his mind and shame him.

  Spock frequently had nightmares in which he arrived at school and suddenly broke into laughter or tears. Though he could never discuss such a thing with his parents or his peers, since accompanying his parents to Earth, clowns had become a constant source of concern to him.

  “When we get out of here,” Kirk said after he caught his breath, “I’m going to buy you a slang translator. Vulcans have slang, don’t they?”

  Spock knew what “slang” meant, and shook his head. “A word is what it is, or it is not. The Vulcan term is kaiidth.”

  “A quantum language. How about that.”

  Spock stared at the human, struck by the insight that was both fascinating and true, and wondered if it was at all possible that what Kirk had just said was something that he had meant to say. Could this young human actually have knowledge of the quantum characteristics of energy and matter and the intellectual imagination to abstract that concept to the underlying cultural structure of Vulcan languages and dialects? It didn’t seem possible.

  “Indeed,” Spock said, because once again, Kirk left him with no idea what to say in reply.

  The force-field hum died, and both Kirk and Spock looked to the doorway as the security bars slid open again. Mallory entered with a younger man wearing the bright red shirt of a Starfleet Security officer. He was the first uniformed Starfleet member Spock had seen in Headquarters. The Starfleet officer was unsmiling, and carried a metal case with an indecipherable serial number stenciled on its side.

  “James,” Mallory said, then nodded at Spock. “And—” He glanced at his padd. “Mr. Spock, I have your first name here, but I will spare us both the embarrassment of listening to me try to pronounce it. Could you both stand, please.”