by Diane Carey
McCoy's eyes were wide. "I'll bet the jewelry these people wear is the same kind of thing! All attached to something symbolic. Like those little mirrors."
"To look at the damned." Pacing past them, Kirk rubbed the dozen tiny burns on his knuckles. "Satan … wizards … witches, druid priests … all nothing more than remnants of a war in space during a superstitious time. It's mind-boggling."
Spock shifted his shoulders a little. "Before science and medicine upgraded the quality of daily life, there was little to turn to but superstition, Captain. Unfortunately, these innocent refugees fell victim to that."
Kirk looked at him. "You really believe this?"
"It is not a matter of belief. Long ago, Vulcan was indeed occupied, for a time, by beings we called Ok'San. They resembled the Furies in many ways, and their impact was keenly felt. Many Vulcans retain a distant memory of the turmoil they brought us."
Kirk nodded. "Yes … we've also run up on this kind of thing before. We know it's possible. According to Zennor, the losing civilization was banished, unceremoniously dumped on a handful of neighboring planets half the galaxy away. They fell into a dark age, crawled out of it, found each other, fought with each other, then found out they had similar backgrounds and that they'd all been kicked out at the same time. And during that time, we caught up with them technologically."
"And now they're back," McCoy said. "And we're all here together."
Kirk spun to him. "But it wasn't them!" He gestured as if to point through the bulkheads of the starship to the huge ship flanking them. "And it certainly wasn't us. The winning civilization is dead and gone, and all its war crimes are gone with it. I refuse to take responsibility for any action by anyone other than myself or my crew, and I only take on the crew's because I'm the commanding officer. We certainly don't owe them anything and they don't deserve to take what's ours. Times change, history moves along. No one is 'owed' by the children of others. This is as silly as if I went back to some corner of Roman Britain and claimed it as my own, because some ancestor of mine owned it a thousand years ago. I don't buy this collective-memory group-rights mind-set."
"We have to accept that Zennor's people do buy it," Spock said. "And that will be our stumbling block. The fixation on having been banished or punished is not a new one. Neither is the link to fire which you both encountered so intimately."
"How astute," McCoy drawled, and rubbed his sore arm.
"The concept of burning the guilty, or the 'damned,'" Spock went on, ignoring him, "has a logical source. 'Gehenna' was a pit outside of Jerusalem where refuse was burned. Parents frequently threatened children with 'sending them to Gehenna' if they failed to behave. Hence the images of flame in a place of punishment. Over the generations on Earth, that image took on names like Orcu, Styx, Aralu, Jahannan, Doom, Hades, Hell … and on other planets names such as Kagh'Tragh and Aralua. Even Vulcan had such a concept, though we dropped it generations ago. All involved banishment and punishment."
"If they'd had this on the mountain," McCoy grumbled, "there'd be eleven commandments."
"Captain," Spock cautioned, "although Zennor and his crew have the physical appearance of devils, of 'Furies,' they do not seem to have the inner makings of evil purpose. Legend was obviously written by the winners."
"Saints and demons can be the same," Kirk contemplated, "depending on whether you approve of their work."
He knew the bitterness was coming out in his voice, but his feelings were boiling to the surface and he didn't feel inclined to push them down. He was beginning to get a picture of what his duty would be, and he didn't like looking at it.
"They're not demons, no matter what they look like. They're just people with a fixed purpose, no different from any others who get their minds stuck on something. Zennor's a decent, forthright captain on a mission and he wants to do the right thing. It's just what I would do if I had those beliefs. And I stood by and let him kill Garamanus, even though I knew Garamanus was on the right track. I should've stopped it."
Spock looked like a boy who'd broken a window with a rock, but wasn't sure whether the building had been condemned yet or not. He watched his captain. "Your devotion to Zennor is most unexpected, sir."
Gazing at the forward screen, Kirk sadly said, "I like him. We have a lot in common."
McCoy put one foot up on the stand of Spock's chair. "Figures you'd get on so well with the Devil."
Crooking that eyebrow, Spock almost smiled. His eyes smiled, at least, and Kirk was flooded with a sense of possibility that blunted the torment of the moment.
"What do I do now?" Kirk considered. "Escort a hostile power into Federation space? Abandon them here to stumble on the truth, then to attack the Klingons? Pretend they wouldn't find us eventually? I'll have to notify Starfleet. Have them standing by."
At this moment he hated his rank. He hated being the watchful renegade of Starfleet, who not only had trouble dropped at his door, but who went chasing when it appeared. He didn't feel as unshatterable as his reputation and now remembered Kellen's expression when the Klingon general had discovered that the great Kirk was as much cautious sentinel as sword swallower.
Kellen had been right about everything all along. So had Garamanus.
He moved between McCoy and Spock, running his hand along the red rail. "I have to talk to him. I have to make him understand, think past that tribal clubfoot he drags around."
"Captain …" Spock spoke, but he had no more to say, no way to bewitch logic so it could solve his captain's trouble.
"Come on, Mr. Spock," McCoy said, and took the Vulcan's arm. "It's that time. Back to sickbay. I want you to walk very slowly."
Spock lingered a moment longer, still watching Kirk, still searching for something to say.
In his periphery Kirk saw him, but this time didn't turn, didn't glance. He tucked his chin to bury a shudder. He would provide no excuses for Spock to stay. No more mistakes.
"Captain?"
"Mr. Chekov?" His voice was a croak.
"Reading the Klingon fleet coming into short-range, sir. ETA, thirty minutes, distance—"
The bridge went up on an edge as if it had been kicked from under the port side. Sirens blared; red alert came on automatically, changing the lights on all the panels for emergency readings in case the main power wobbled. Kirk slammed sideways and barely missed crushing Lieutenant Nordstrom at the communications station, where she was hanging over her console, pressed to the board by the impact.
He skidded past her and caught himself on the aft science board, bending his back painfully over the edge and holding himself by his fingernails on the rubberized edge. One foot came up off the floor. Around him the bridge flashed to black and white as the lighting blinked, searching for conduits that hadn't been ruptured. The surreal forms of Spock and McCoy were crushed up against the side of the turbolift doorway.
For a moment he couldn't turn his head. Artificial gravity was being compromised by impact or energy flush and he heard the systems yowl, but couldn't react. Any moment—
His arms and legs lightened abruptly and he shoved himself off the console. He pushed Nordstrom back into her chair and told her, "All decks clear for action."
"Aye, sir!" she said on a rushing breath.
Stepping around her, he caught both Spock's arm and McCoy's good arm and provided leverage as McCoy got to his feet; then they both pulled Spock up and held him through the clutch of pain until he gained some control.
"Over here." Kirk drew them to the science station and brought Spock to his chair. "Sit down." As Spock valiantly reached for his sensor controls, Kirk dropped to the command deck and glanced at the helm. "Mr. Byers, visual checks."
Byers nodded and punched his controls, looked at them, then punched some more.
Several of the auxiliary monitors lining the upper bridge flickered on, snatching power from other systems long enough to do their jobs, to show scenes of open space around the starship, including, off the port beam, the enormous purple pla
tes of the Fury ship.
"Put our forward shields to him, Mr. Byers."
Again Byers didn't manage to respond, but only complied.
The plates still glowed with expended energy. No need to ask what had happened.
"Hail him." Kirk braced himself.
"Channel open, sir," Nordstrom offered.
"Kirk to Zennor. Please come in."
He was as cold as a beached carp. His hands scarcely had any feeling. He knew what was coming and that there was no way to backpedal.
Nordstrom's wide Scandinavian features buckled as she touched her earpiece. "Channel's still open, sir. He's hearing you."
He took her at her word. Drawing closer to his command chair as if closer to Zennor, he spoke again.
"You looked at the files."
Moments passed with not so much as a crackle on the comm. He waited. The bridge around him was dim now, some lights still flickering, trying to come back on. The whir of ventilators told him there was a gaseous leak somewhere and compensation systems had come on. The ship would take care of herself to some degree—
"I looked."
A glint of solid chance rang through with the sound of Zennor's deep voice.
"We have to talk about this," Kirk attempted. He almost winced. His sentence sounded hollow and pointless.
"There is no talk. I was wrong. The Danai were right all along. Garamanus was right. This is what he was trying to say when I ruined him. Now I must take on his purpose. He picked the right place, and I will reclaim it in his name."
The fabric of this tenuous peace was ancient and crumbling. Kirk felt it shred in his fingers.
"He wasn't right," he insisted. "You still believe the things you told me, don't you?"
"I was right only when I told you that people don't change. You are the conqueror."
"You know that's not true. The past doesn't matter."
"The past is all that matters."
Gazing at the slowly turning alien ship on the forward screen, Kirk gripped his chair. "We're friends. We're alike. Isn't that a better foundation than what you're talking about?"
He waited. Nothing came back.
No one on the bridge moved. The alarms and alerts seemed to get quieter in anticipation.
"You knew about this." Zennor's words were heavier even than the usual sound of his voice now, and the personal wounding came through. "Is this how your people wrecked our civilization before? With trust as a weapon?"
"No," Kirk said desperately. "Those mistakes were mine alone, not my culture's. Think … think! Be rational for one more moment. No one has any right to a particular piece of space. You have the right to live as free beings in our society. Our hand of friendship is still extended. Don't knock it away."
In the corner of his eye he saw McCoy step slowly down to the center deck and join him on the other side of the command chair, providing what moral support he could and trying nobly to join him in the responsibility for what had happened. Now the two of them had something more in common than they'd ever wanted.
McCoy moved forward a little and was about to say something when the comm boomed again.
"Go to your civilization and tell them to get out."
Kirk blinked at the screen.
Aggravated, he allowed himself a dirty expression. "You want me to tell a trillion and a quarter people … to pack up and move?"
"That is what you told us."
The statement burned, for it had its strange ring of truth, at least truth as Zennor saw things.
"It wasn't us," Kirk abridged. "No one alive had anything to do with what happened to your ancestors. My offer stands. Come with us and be welcome in the Federation. But you'll have to shed your attachment to the past."
He waited for the threadlike moment of communication to crack, but instead there was only another stretch of silence. This time he wasn't going to wait.
"Zennor."
When had this happened? At which moment had the career, the job, the duty become his veins and the blood flowing into them? When had the desire to drive a ship and do some good turned into responsibility for the whole Federation's well-being?
He'd crawled out of a rocky youth, or been kicked, gone into Starfleet, where everyone insisted on conformity yet gave him medals for fire eating. He'd innovated, he'd survived, he'd swallowed fire, and they'd pinned awards on him and handed him a few hundred other lives and a ship with which to execute his appetite upon the galaxy.
All for this?
Yes, exactly this.
"Zennor, answer me."
His answer came, but not in the form he desired.
"Captain—" Spock stared at his readouts, then turned his chair until he could look at the main screen without moving his head too much. "Something is happening in space. A fissure is opening. Reading a large solid object moving through. Coming toward us."
Kirk pushed forward, stepped up onto the platform and stood in front of his command chair. "Dimensions."
"Are … roughly seven hundred thousand metric tons. . . . Size … is … reading out at more than …"
Even Spock couldn't keep the astonishment out of his voice.
"Length overall is in excess of one thousand meters, sir."
Sweat broke out on Kirk's face. "On visual." Nothing happened, and he was forced to snap, "Mr. Byers, forward visual."
The big main screen dropped the image of Zennor's purple and black pinecone and caught a wide view of space in time to see a bizarre gash in the blackness of space, as if someone had come along with a giant cleaver and taken a random hack. Out of the gash spilled liquid blue light, and from within the light came a vessel.
More than half a mile long, a thousand feet tall, shaped like Zennor's ship, the enormous moving corkscrew twisted itself through the gash in space, and when it was through the gash sealed up with a snap that made everyone blink.
"Any drop in mass?" Kirk quickly asked.
"None," Spock said. "They must have solved that."
As they watched, the giant vessel screwed itself through open space toward Zennor's ship, and with skilled excellence the two came bow-to-stern and executed a flawless docking maneuver. Now Zennor's ship provided only the forward section of what had become a mammoth vessel.
Burning with the knowledge that his ugly guess had been right, Kirk looked upon the greatest assault vehicle he had ever seen. If its power matched its size, there would be disaster today.
McCoy backed off to the ship's rail, apparently sensing that this wasn't the time to be hanging on the captain's chair, disturbing the bubble that was the command sphere. Kirk sensed the change without looking. He'd noticed that since the beginning of his career—the more tense the situation, the more the crew tended to keep distance, giving the officers room to think. He'd come to use that as a jump-start for dangerous thinking, a kind of personal red alert. He wished his head weren't throbbing.
He didn't really care if the crew saw him wince. Maybe in a few minutes he would, if they lived.
"Emergency alert, all decks," he said. "We're about to do battle with the damned. And they have nothing to lose."
Your foes are determined, relentless, and nigh.
—"Lock the Door, Larrison,"
a folk song
Chapter Eighteen
"SOUND GENERAL QUARTERS."
He'd held off saying it, but the order was overdue. Hope had kept it back until now.
"Battle stations … all hands to battle stations. This is not a drill. . . . Secure all positions … Damage-control parties on standby."
"Mr. Byers, veer us off to maximum phaser range. I don't want to take another of those hard punches at close range. Get me some room to maneuver."
"Yes, sir … maximum phaser range, sir."
"Mr. Spock, any other contacts from behind that fissure?"
"None, sir. They may regard their combined vessel as some kind of dreadnought. In fact, there is no sign of the fissure any longer at all."
"We know what kind of
power it takes to open it," Kirk uttered, more to himself than anyone else. "Practically have to float a black hole in here just to open the door."
He should send Spock below while he had the chance, he knew. An inner alert stopped him. He noticed, though, that McCoy Wasn't saying anything. Spock would be little better off being tossed about on the way down to sickbay than here at his post, where all people with spinal injuries should be, of course.
Kirk understood them both. He even understood himself this time.
He settled into his command chair and forced himself to steady down.
"Secure the ship. Shut down any nonemergency emissions. Short-range sensors on priority. Impulse engines prepare for tight maneuvering. Warp speed on standby. Arm phasers. And someone get me a cup of coffee."
"Nonemergency emissions, aye. Short-range sensors ready, sir."
"Impulse engines answering, sir."
"Phasers armed and ready, sir."
"Warp engines ready and standing by, sir."
"Cup of coffee, aye, sir."
The parroting back of his orders was reassuring and bolstered him. Underlying energy swung around the bridge from person to person, and through the ship like blood pumping.
"Photon guidance on standby," he added, and Chekov said it back almost immediately. Settling back in his chair, with the cool leather pressing to his lower back and reminding him of lingering aches from Capella IV, he surveyed the forward screen and the now-huge vessel that was at a notable distance now that the starship was moving back. "How close is the Klingon fleet now?"
"ETA fourteen minutes, Captain," Chekov reported. He'd been ready for that.
"Hail General Kellen."
"Go ahead, sir," Nordstrom said. "Channels open."
"General Kellen, this is Captain Kirk."
"I know what you think you are. I suggest you not attempt to stop us again. I have my fleet now. Ten battle cruisers. I am officially revoking your privilege to be in Klingon space. Go home. This is man's work."
