“We’ll be reaching the convergence in nine minutes,” Scott said, beside Kirk, his eyes never straying from the ever-changing viewscreen. “So, at eight minutes, fifty-five seconds, we’ll drop to three-quarters impulse for the rest of the ride.”
Kirk sat back in his chair, wondering if he should ask Mr. Scott for some details regarding that five-second margin of safety he’d built into the flight plan. The rift convergence was the region where interstellar space ended and the rift cloud began. Usually, there would be no difficulty in the Enterprise encountering a gas cloud at warp velocities; she did it all the time. Her navigational shields could easily clear a path for her, so that no errant molecule of dust might blast through her hull with a disastrous release of superluminal energy.
But the nature of the cloud ahead meant sensor capabilities would be degraded by subspace interference, and there was a star, of a sort, waiting in the cloud’s center. Without a precise fix on its location, Kirk knew it would be foolhardy to maintain a warp field so close to a strong gravity source. Though the Enterprise currently traveled at one-hundred-and-fifty million kilometers per relative second, the last few million kilometers of her voyage would take almost twenty hours to cross at sublight speed.
But still…to go from more than warp seven to less than full impulse in five seconds…
“Mr. Scott, I have to ask about that five-second safety margin.”
The chief engineer frowned at the question, as if he had been caught at something unsavory.
“Aye, Cap’n, I understand your concern. We’ll get it down to one-point-five seconds, sir. I guarantee ye that.” Scott turned for the steps leading up to his engineering station.
But Kirk was already out of his chair, reaching out a hand to hold the engineer in place. “Excuse me. You want to decrease the safety margin?”
Scott halted on the stairs, his face indicating his surprise at Kirk’s question and action. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Kirk maintained his grip on Scott’s arm. “I was wondering if a five-second margin was long enough.”
Scott blinked, and to Kirk the engineer’s expression couldn’t have shown more confusion than if Kirk had asked which bridge chair was the captain’s.
“Sir,” Scott said quietly, as if he didn’t want the rest of the bridge crew to overhear his words, either, “five seconds is enough time for this ship to come to full relative stop, beam aboard a circus complete with dancing elephants, then jump back to warp.”
Kirk decided he didn’t like Scott’s condescending tone, but he released his grip on the engineer’s arm. “Mr. Scott, I am well aware of this ship’s capabilities, and this crew’s expertise. But the rift cloud and the dwarf star’s gravity well do present additional factors to be considered.”
Scott kept his eyes locked on Kirk’s. “And I have considered them, Captain. That’s my job.”
Kirk’s eyes did not break contact with Scott’s. “Thank you, Mr. Scott. You may keep the safety margin at five seconds.”
Giving Kirk a curt nod, the chief took the last few steps to his engineering station.
Acutely aware of the silence and watching eyes of his bridge crew, Kirk returned to his chair and settled back, wondering how long it would be before Mr. Scott’s transfer request made it through channels, wondering if he’d ever get along with any of this crew.
For the next few minutes, at least, the bridge ran smoothly.
In the last two minutes before reaching the convergence, Sulu arrived and stood quietly to the side of Kirk’s center chair. The young physicist had no duties to perform on the bridge, but his position of department head allowed him to be present, and, Kirk judged, his curiosity forced him to do the same.
As Kelso, at the helm, counted down the final few seconds to the convergence, all eyes turned to the viewscreen, even Spock’s. Kirk forced himself to keep from leaning forward in anticipation—he didn’t want to do anything that might be interpreted as his possessing less than full confidence in his crew.
The blazing colors on the viewscreen cast kaleidoscopic bands of light across the bridge.
“Eight seconds to convergence,” the helmsman reported.
Kirk caught himself tapping his finger against the arm of his chair again, made himself stop.
“Dropping from warp…now.”
Kirk heard the navigator’s announcement at the same time he felt the thrum of the warp engines instantly diminish, even as the bridge of the Enterprise almost imperceptibly shook once as the impulse engines took on the task of driving the ship through ordinary space-time. The entire transition from warp to sublight had taken less than a second.
“Two…one…”
The hum of the navigational shield capacitors ramped up as empty space suddenly filled with the molecular debris of a long-exploded star.
“Convergence,” Kelso confirmed calmly. “We are in the Mandylion—”
The helmsman’s voice was overpowered by the squeal of the bridge communications speakers.
All on the bridge—Kirk included—slapped hands to ears as a head-splitting shriek of sound filled the air.
“It was a subspace beacon,” Spock said bluntly.
Kirk looked from the communications readout on the conference room viewscreen to his department heads sitting around the Centauran redwood table. “Then why wasn’t it filtered through communication’s acoustic safeguards?” Kirk’s ears still rang from the stunning sonic assault.
Lieutenant Tanaka, visibly shaken by what had happened less than an hour ago, spoke up as if he felt Kirk’s question was directed at him. He coughed nervously, then glanced at the junior officer seated beside him. “I, uh, believe Lieutenant Uhura has come up with the explanation.”
Kirk fixed his attention on the young Earth woman in an officer’s gold duty uniform to Tanaka’s right. According to the assignment roster, her usual station was in the subspace relay room. The communications staff on duty there at the instant the Enterprise had passed through the rift convergence had been even harder hit than the bridge crew. Dr. Piper had told Kirk that all eight specialists in the relay room would require cochlear implants. As the shrill blast of acoustic energy had blown out more than half the intercraft speakers on the ship, along with most of Uhura’s subspace processing circuitry, only the fact that the communications officer had been off-duty had saved her hearing.
But even though the young lieutenant had been roused from sleep, rushed to duty, and now sat before her ship’s commanding officers during a red alert, she betrayed no nervousness that Kirk could detect. Kirk approved of her composure.
“Lieutenant?” he prompted.
“The beacon wasn’t strictly a communications signal,” Uhura said crisply.
Kirk regarded her with concern. Lieutenant Junior Grade Uhura appeared to be saying that the ship’s intelligent filtering system for subspace signals had not functioned as designed.
There were several different classes of subspace signal the Enterprise was capable of receiving. The higher frequencies were suited for communications, while others corresponded to natural subspace phenomena, and thus were used for faster-than-light sensor scans. By constantly evaluating incoming subspace radiation, the ship’s computer determined which frequencies were artificial, and thus probable communication signals, and which were natural. Only then did the computer feed the signals into the appropriate subsystems: communications, navigation, science, or tactical.
Without such screening, Kirk knew the ship’s communications systems would be awash in the constant static of subspace interference from spinning singularities, unbound dimensional strings, gravitational ripples, tachyon currents, and an entire cosmic zoo of other subspace anomalies.
“Yet the beacon’s signal was interpreted as communication by the ship’s computer,” he pointed out.
“I believe the ship’s computer was deliberately misled,” Uhura said.
Kirk folded his hands on the table, noticing as he did so that even Spock’s inte
rest had been engaged by Uhura’s assertion. At least, that was how Kirk was interpreting Spock’s raised eyebrow. “How is that possible, Lieutenant? And what makes you think so?”
“The signal was transmitted at a frequency associated with fifth-order dimensional slippages.”
Kirk waited for her to continue. Dimensional slippages were common enough wherever neutron stars orbited black holes.
“The computer filters recognized the signal as a natural transmission, and shunted it to the science subsystems,” Uhura said.
“Yet we all heard it on the comm system,” Kirk reminded her.
Uhura remained admirably unflappable. “Because, sir, once the signal was processed by science, a compressed datastream was unfolded. That caused the signal to spread through every subspace frequency monitored by the Enterprise until it filled the entire subspace spectrum.”
Uhura turned to the wall screen. “Computer, display subspace inputs, all categories, time code thirty seconds prior to reaching the rift convergence—to five seconds after the encounter.”
“Working,” the computer replied.
A moment later, the wall screen displayed a straightforward Feynman graph of faster-than-light signal propagation. Kirk’s attention was drawn to a single strong pulse in a narrow, lower-frequency range coinciding with the instant the Enterprise crossed into the Mandylion Rift. Two seconds later, the graph was a block of solid red—every subspace frequency filled with a maximum-strength signal.
“That is impossible, Lieutenant Uhura,” Spock said. “If the Enterprise had encountered a blast of subspace radiation of that magnitude, there would be nothing left of her. Or of us.”
“That’s where the deception comes in, Mr. Spock,” Uhura said.
Kirk was gratified to see that his communications officer in no way appeared to be intimidated by his science officer. I’m glad someone on this ship isn’t, he thought.
“The Enterprise was not subjected to subspace radiation as the graph shows,” Uhura explained.
“Internally generated?” Kirk asked with a frown.
“I believe so, sir. As a result of the decompressed signal that spread through the ship’s computer network. That’s also how the signal was able to bypass the safety thresholds on the volume settings.”
“False input,” Spock said by way of confirming Uhura’s reasoning.
Uhura nodded agreement. “It’s as if we changed the programming for an optical scanner so that red light would be interpreted as full spectrum. One input. Multiple readings.”
Kirk understood as well. The implications were unnerving. “So whoever transmitted that beacon signal has the capability of reprogramming our computer systems at a distance?”
Uhura shook her head. “Not reprogramming our computers, sir. Overwhelming them is more like it.”
“I fail to see the distinction,” Kirk said.
Uhura hesitated, as if unsure how to respond to her captain’s comment.
Spock took over. “Allow me, Lieutenant.” He looked at Kirk before addressing himself to all the department heads.
“If our computer had been reprogrammed by the signal’s decompressed datastream, it would indicate that the signal originated with someone familiar with our technology. The Klingons, perhaps. Or Andorians. But the fact that we have been subjected to a brute force attack on our computer—”
Kirk had wondered when someone was going to get to that. As far as he was concerned, the Enterprise had been attacked as surely as if a photon torpedo had been launched at her.
“—suggests that our attacker possesses no special knowledge of us or our capabilities.” Spock paused as if waiting for comment.
Sulu obliged him first. “Other than the fact that we use subspace frequencies for communications,” he noted.
“And navigation,” Spock added. “Indeed, warp travel is inherently dangerous without the means to scan ahead with sensors that utilize faster-than-light signals.”
Kirk looked down at the electronic clipboard before him. Its dull gray screen contained a single list of every department to have sustained equipment damage resulting from the subspace beacon. It might as well have been a list of every department on the ship, period.
“So, it wasn’t a beacon,” Kirk said quietly. As he looked up from the display, he saw every face turned to him. “It was a weapon. Which has left us blind and deaf in the subspace spectrum, cutting us off from communication with Starfleet, and preventing us from going to warp.”
Kirk saw Uhura look at Tanaka with a questioning expression. Tanaka nodded once, as if giving her permission to speak. Kirk wasn’t in the mood to wait.
“You disagree, Lieutenant?” he asked her sharply.
To the young woman’s credit, she didn’t appear to be intimidated by her captain, either.
“Sir, the beacon did have the effect of overloading our subspace systems. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it was deliberately employed as a weapon.”
Kirk went straight to the heart of Uhura’s argument. “You believe it was a legitimate attempt to communicate?”
“Yes, sir.”
Kirk made note of Uhura’s naïveté. “Then what was the message, Lieutenant?”
Uhura seemed surprised by his question. “I…it’s obvious, isn’t it, sir?”
Kirk felt his face stiffen. The officer was young. He would overlook her questioning him. Once. “If it was obvious, would I be asking?”
Uhura straightened up as if she had suddenly realized what she had done. “I’m sorry, sir. The message is, I believe, ‘Keep out.’”
Kirk glanced at his science officer. “Spock?”
“It is a logical conclusion, Captain. Not a weapon, but a message.”
Kirk wondered if Spock was somehow being obstinate, or if he really did see their current situation in such stark, black-and-white terms.
“Surely, a weapon can also serve as an effective message, Mr. Spock. In naval terms, what’s just happened to us has been employed for centuries.”
Abruptly, Kirk stood up, pleased because the meeting was over and a conclusion had been reached—his conclusion.
“They’ve just fired their cannons across our bow,” Kirk said, “warning us not to proceed.”
Chairs slid against the carpeted deck as the department heads scrambled to stand with their captain.
Spock gave their bewilderment a voice. “Then what shall we do?” he asked.
“Proceed, Mr. Spock.” Kirk began heading for the conference room door, then turned to look back at his senior staff, still standing round the table.
The temptation was too great.
“Full steam ahead,” he said.
Chapter Ten
BAJOR, STARDATE 55595.9
“FULL STEAM AHEAD?” Picard said as Kirk stopped, just to catch his breath.
Kirk laughed, then coughed to clear his throat, dry from so much talking. He felt the irritating crunch of grit between his teeth. And, against all logic, the dark spot on the horizon did not appear to have moved for the past half hour—as if he and Picard were no closer to reaching it at all.
Worst of all, he was trapped in an unforgiving landscape where action was, for once, a less attractive option than talk. He had only himself to blame, not that he’d confess that to Picard.
“Back then, there was just something about Spock that…” Kirk wasn’t certain how to explain his reaction to Spock in those early days of their careers. In truth, today, Spock was his closest, dearest friend, but looking back on how they had first worked together—the way Kirk remembered having gone out of his way to deliberately provoke the stoic Vulcan—it was unbelievable to Kirk that he had ever treated anyone in that way.
“You wanted to get an emotional reaction from him,” Picard suggested.
Kirk shook his head. “At the time, if you had asked me, that’s probably the answer I would have given. But the fact is, I did get emotional reactions from Spock. All the time. It’s just…”
“That Vulc
ans express their emotions differently.”
At that, Kirk nodded. “I had never worked with an alien so closely before. Not day to day.”
“We often try to make aliens, or those of different cultures, fit into our own modes of behavior.”
Kirk narrowed his eyes at Picard. “That sounds suspiciously like the opening lecture in the History of the Prime Directive course at the Academy.”
“It’s true, though, don’t you think? That whatever emotional response was in you, that led you to try to provoke Spock to make him…more ‘human’ in your terms, is exactly the human tendency that the Prime Directive is designed to restrain.”
Kirk had thought long and hard about this question: the need or lack thereof to restrain the human spirit. Certainly the horrific events he had experienced two years ago on Halkan, resulting in the devastating loss of his beloved wife, Teilani, had only thrown him deeper into introspection, trying to make sense of his life, of existence itself. And though he didn’t pretend to be a philosopher, in the depths of his despair, he had, he thought, begun to glimpse some answers.
“Jean-Luc, what’s wrong with wanting to share the best of what it means to be human? I’m not in Starfleet anymore. I have no problem saying that I believe the Prime Directive is the pinnacle of human arrogance. To have the power to alleviate another’s pain and suffering, and yet to do nothing because it might offend the ‘natural order of things?’ The more pain and suffering I’ve seen in my life, the more I’ve experienced for myself, the more repugnant I find that argument.”
Picard’s measured reply told Kirk he, too, had given this matter much thought. “You’re a father, Jim. In which way do you think your son Joseph will learn life’s lessons more effectively? By being permitted to make his own mistakes and learn from them? Or by having you provide all the answers before he’s learned to ask the questions he must?”
Kirk declined to bring his young son’s education into this argument. There was a more fundamental principle at issue. “There’s that arrogance again. Who decided that an alien culture is little more than a child? The Federation Council? How’s that different from me deciding in that first five-year mission that Spock should abandon his Vulcan heritage and allow his emotions free range?”
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