by Dayton Ward
“Are we still on schedule for this afternoon?” he asked, eyeing the computer screen perched on one corner of his desk. Was it his imagination, or were the words and numbers streaming across the screen a bit blurry?
Gilkeson replied, “Yes, sir. Commandant Rouviere said this year’s class has been talking about your lecture for weeks. He instructed me to warn you to be ready for an onslaught of questions.”
Unable to deal with a small flush of pride, Kirk turned his chair so that he now faced the large, curved windows that served as his office’s rear wall. Twenty stories above the ground, he was afforded a spectacular view of San Francisco Bay as well as the Starfleet Academy campus just a short walk from the headquarters complex. Even from this distance, he was able to see people moving about the walking paths that wound around and through the lush, well-maintained lawns and other green spaces. Tiny figures, most wearing maroon uniforms identifying them as cadets, traversed the trails or partook of various outdoor activities.
It was a spectacular day to be outside, Kirk concluded.
“Do you think the commandant would let me hold my lecture in the park?”
“Only if he doesn’t care about seeing any of his cadets for the rest of the day.” Looking up from her data padd, Gilkeson added, “Your reputation does precede you, Admiral. That’s sort of the point.”
Kirk sighed. “Thanks for reminding me.” Though his apparent notoriety for bending or flouting rules was by no means unearned, he preferred to think that the choices he had made on those occasions were in service to the greater good. Now that he was in a position of leadership as well as teaching and mentoring thanks to his frequent visits to the Academy, the last thing he wanted to do was instill in the latest crop of cadets a desire to emulate his behavior to such an exacting degree. On the other hand, neither did he wish to dampen their enthusiasm as they prepared to travel to the stars as representatives of their homeworlds and the Federation. He wanted them to learn from their instructors to remember the spirit as well as the letter of the laws and regulations they were expected to uphold, but he also hoped that they would not ignore their gut, their instinct to do what was right regardless of the rules standing in their way.
Sometimes, it’s better to seek forgiveness instead of permission.
“Admiral Morrow just sent a message,” said Gilkeson, her attention once more focused on her data padd. “He’s requesting a meeting with you following your lecture.” She smirked. “So much for playing hooky the rest of the afternoon.”
“It’s like he’s a mind reader.” Kirk turned his chair from the window. “What’s he want to talk about?”
“Fleet redeployment along the Neutral Zone. He mentions your report about the recent spike in activity from the Romulans.”
Nodding, Kirk replied, “Let him know I’ll be there.” The report in question had been the result of several late nights spent poring over data gleaned from numerous sources. Log entries from starships assigned to patrol the zone, long-range scanner telemetry from observation outposts positioned along the border, and even unofficial accounts from civilian shipmasters operating in adjacent sectors had contributed to his analysis. Once the patterns began to emerge, Kirk still did not know if the Romulans were up to something or were simply modifying their own patrol patterns in an attempt to gauge Starfleet responses, but both of those scenarios factored into his thinking. With all of this swirling in his head, he had consulted his closest friend and trusted counsel, Captain Spock, and the two of them polished the final report Kirk submitted to the Commander of Starfleet, Admiral Harrison Morrow. Their recommendations included new patrol patterns for ships on the Federation side of the zone, as well as a series of exercises starship commanders could employ in order to observe the responses of their Romulan counterparts.
And the game plays on.
Kirk had for the most part been unable to affect how his status as a playing piece on the ever-evolving board changed over time. Now far removed from his former life as a starship captain, his role as chief of Starfleet Operations included sending other starship commanders to push outward the boundaries of both territory and knowledge, dispatching them as explorers and defenders of Federation security. Meanwhile, Kirk’s lengthy career and hard-won experience, and even the notoriety that had come his way over the years, had seen to it he now was “too important” or “too valuable” to risk being lost in space.
We need you here, as put by his friend and mentor, Admiral Heihachiro Nogura, when trying to mollify Kirk while telling him about his new assignment at Starfleet Command following a brief flirtation with retirement earlier in the year. I need you. I need your ability to grasp the bigger picture the way very few of these other rear echelon managers and analysts possess. None of them has been out there, or if they have, then it’s been years or decades since they sat in a center seat. I need somebody with fresh eyes and fresh ideas. That’s you, Jim. I need you, and so does the next generation of starship captains. I want them to learn from officers like you.
It was Nogura. There were very few people Kirk could outright refuse when called to serve. Admiral Heihachiro Nogura was one such person. Besides, though he had opted to retire from Starfleet several months ago, it had not taken him long to grow restless. Even the companionship of Antonia Salvatori, the woman he had met while visiting his uncle’s farm in Idaho, had failed to shield him from the desire—no, the need—to serve, to be useful. He tried to escape it, retreating to a secluded mountain cabin he had built in the Sierra Nevada region of California, but the call could not be denied. The retirement and his life with Antonia ended at the same moment. While Kirk held no regrets about returning to Starfleet, losing her had been painful; part of him suspected it eventually would have happened one way or another. He had long ago come to understand that being unable to sustain a long-term romantic relationship was one of his many failings.
You should stick to what you’re good at.
Of course, Kirk had been unable to do just that for a while, now. How many years had passed since he had occupied the captain’s chair on the bridge of a starship? Sure, there was the occasional one-off mission, but how long had it been since a ship and its crew were his to command?
Too long.
Something beeped, and Kirk looked from his desk to see Commander Gilkeson once more consulting her data padd. “It’s time, sir. Commandant Rouviere says he’ll meet you at the Academy’s VIP transporter station.”
“I thought I’d walk,” Kirk said.
“Then you probably should have left ten minutes ago.”
Ignoring the remark, Kirk rose from his chair and brushed the front of his uniform tunic to smooth away the wrinkles. “How do I look?”
Gilkeson offered a nod of approval. “Ready to kick cadet butt and take names, sir.” She glanced again at her data padd. “If you’re serious about walking, I can alert him that there might be a slight delay.”
“Perhaps you can call downstairs and have my wheelchair standing by.”
“Maintenance reports they’re still reconfiguring its dilithium matrix, sir, so it’s only good for impulse speeds.”
The lightning-quick comeback prompted a chuckle, and Kirk rendered a mock salute. “Well played, Commander.”
He was halfway across his office and heading for the door when the chime of his desk communicator panel beeped. Though tempted to ignore it, a skeptical look from his assistant stopped him from leaving. “Answer it. Maybe the Romulans are invading, and they’ll cancel the lecture.”
“No one’s that lucky, sir.” Moving to Kirk’s desk, Gilkeson tapped the control to activate its embedded comm interface. “Admiral Kirk’s office. Lieutenant Commander Gilkeson speaking.”
The soft, gruff yet stern voice of Admiral Heihachiro Nogura erupted from the speakers installed in unobtrusive locations around the office. “Starfleet Academy’s still standing, Commander, so I’m assuming he’s n
ot left yet.”
“I’m here, Admiral,” Kirk said, waving Gilkeson away from the desk and nodding at her expression of relief. “What can I do for you?”
“You can haul yourself up to my office, Jim. We’ve got ourselves an actual emergency, right here in our own backyard.”
• • •
Kirk directed Commander Gilkeson to make apologies on his behalf to Commandant Rouviere and the waiting class. The cadets likely would hate him for not rescuing them from an opportunity for their other professors to assign them additional work and study. He then made his way to the top floor of Starfleet’s main headquarters building. He entered the foyer of Nogura’s office, and the commander working at the desk reserved for the admiral’s assistant rose from his chair, snapping to a position of attention. Kirk struggled to remember the man’s name, but failed.
Bennett. Beyer. Bonanno. Something like that.
“Good morning, sir,” said the young officer. “Admiral Nogura wants me to send you right in.”
Gesturing for him to return to his seat, Kirk replied, “As you were, Commander. Thank you.”
He paused to straighten his maroon uniform jacket and verify that the buckle for his wide black belt was in place before proceeding to the doors, which parted at his approach to the suite’s inner sanctum and allowed him to enter the room without breaking stride. Modest yet tasteful furnishings adorned the office, beginning with the oval-shaped obsidian desk positioned at the room’s far end along with a matching round conference table and chairs situated along the wall to Kirk’s left. A large rectangular viewscreen of the size one might find aboard the bridge of a starship was mounted on the wall opposite the conference table, with a pair of plush recliners positioned before it. Freestanding shelves in the office’s corners held books and an assortment of mementos and other personal items, all of them speaking to their owner’s long, distinguished career.
As with Kirk’s own office, the view of the bay afforded from this location and its concave, full-length windows was magnificent, with the higher elevation offering him a look at Alcatraz Island out beyond the Golden Gate Bridge. Standing before the windows, hands clasped behind his back as he contemplated his vantage point was Heihachiro Nogura.
A human male of Asian descent and indeterminate age—despite Kirk’s best efforts to access that information—Nogura had been a Starfleet flag officer since well before their first meeting years earlier, back when Kirk was a captain and commanding the Enterprise. Further, he had always occupied some key position within the Starfleet Command hierarchy. Twenty years ago, when the Federation and the Klingon Empire appeared locked in a perpetual war footing, Nogura was one of the prime voices directing Starfleet responses and policy at a time when it seemed conflict would erupt at the slightest provocation. Kirk had always found him to be a measured, thoughtful man who communicated much by what he did not say about any given topic, and Kirk believed the reason the Federation was able to prevent all-out war with the Klingons was because of his steady, firm leadership and convictions.
“Good morning, Admiral,” Kirk said, standing just inside the doorway of Nogura’s office. “You wanted to see me?”
Turning from the window, Nogura seemed to swim within the confines of his Starfleet uniform. He had always been slight of build, but Kirk could not help noting how time at long last was beginning to catch up with the man. His thin hair, once jet black with streaks of gray when Kirk had first come to work for him at Starfleet Headquarters, had within the last few years gone completely white. The lines in his face now were longer and deeper, but they did nothing to conceal the fire that still burned in the admiral’s cobalt-blue eyes. Likewise, age had done little to slow him down, as evidenced by the commanding stride with which he crossed his office. He did not slow as he regarded Kirk.
“Do you believe in ghosts, Jim?”
Uncertain as to how to reply, Kirk frowned but said nothing. Nogura, content to let the question go unanswered, walked toward the large viewscreen.
“We appear to have a ghost, right here in our own solar system.” Moving to the keypad set into the wall next to the screen, he pressed a control and the display activated, offering a depiction of the Federation seal. “Computer, open the file marked Anomaly Alpha.” In response to his command, the image shifted so that it now depicted a computer-generated representation of the Sol system. Without further instructions from the admiral, the schematic zoomed in to highlight Neptune and its family of moons.
“Less than two hours ago, our early monitoring people out at Jupiter Station detected an unidentified energy distortion beyond the outer boundary, traveling at warp. Since then, it’s shifted its course to enter the system.”
Kirk frowned. “An artificial energy signature?”
“That’s the logical conclusion. The Jupiter Station teams are still sorting through the data trying to find additional clues.”
“Commander Barrows,” said Kirk. “Good to know she’s overseeing this.” Tonia Barrows had served her first tour of duty as a yeoman aboard the Enterprise during his tenure as that ship’s captain. Their paths had crossed on more frequent occasions in recent years, owing to Barrows having continued her career path in starship operations, advancing to different positions within Starfleet’s operations division. She had taken over as commander of the Early Warning Monitoring Center on Jupiter Station two years earlier, working in close proximity to one of his oldest friends, Leonard McCoy. Barrows and McCoy had enjoyed an on-again, off-again romantic relationship over the years, which apparently had returned to on-again thanks to their posting.
Nogura tapped the keypad and the schematic zoomed in again, highlighting one of Neptune’s tiny moons. “Whatever this thing is, it’s playing hide-and-seek with our sensor buoys and long-range detection grids, but the Jupiter Station team managed to track it for a bit before losing it. After dropping out of warp, it took up position on the far side of Halimede, but when I sent a couple of ships that way to investigate, it disappeared. Sensors have picked up the occasional return, but whatever it is, it’s able to avoid our scans for the most part.”
Recalling his earlier joke with Commander Gilkeson, Kirk said, “A cloaked ship. Could it be the Romulans?”
Nogura shook his head. “The energy signature is all wrong for a Romulan cloaking device. Besides, the Romulans might be brash and bold, but they’re not that brash and bold.”
“I don’t know,” Kirk replied, thinking of his past encounters with the reclusive Federation rival. “It’s not like they haven’t tried unconventional tactics before.” He gestured toward the schematic. “As for the energy signature, it could be some new kind of cloaking field they’ve developed.”
Stepping away from the viewscreen, Nogura took a seat in one of the recliners. “Perhaps, but this isn’t sniffing around outposts on the border, Jim. We’re talking about the heart of the Federation and Starfleet, one of the most heavily trafficked systems in this part of the galaxy. It would be suicide for the Romulans to send a single ship this far. And for what?” He punctuated the question with a derisive snort. “It’s not as though they don’t have other means of gathering intelligence about what goes on here.”
Kirk knew what his friend meant. Romulan spies, surgically altered to appear as Vulcans, humans, or other humanoid races, were a favorite tactic employed by their friends across the Neutral Zone. The practice dated back decades, and though only a handful of these covert agents had been discovered, it was believed that many more still operated undercover within Starfleet and the Federation government. Staff officers like Nogura had taken proactive steps to combat the espionage, and even to play the Romulan Empire’s own game against them. According to the reports to which Kirk was privy, those efforts did not enjoy the same success. Of course, he also knew that his clearance did not permit him full access to the details behind such clandestine missions. Matters of that sort were, as both Nogura and Admiral Morr
ow had told him, “above his pay grade.”
“All right,” he said, “if not them, then who? The Klingons? Their cloaking technology has never been as good as the Romulans’.” He stopped, raising a hand as though to wave away his own suggestion. “No, that doesn’t make sense, either, and for the same reasons as the Romulans. Someone new.”
“That’s what I want you to find out.”
It took an extra second for Kirk to glean the true meaning of Nogura’s words, and when he did, he looked to see the older admiral staring at him, his expression flat and unreadable.
“Me? Admiral, it’s not like you have a shortage of ships to send out there.”
Nogura gestured toward the screen. “Ships aren’t the problem. If we’re dealing with someone or something new, you’re the most experienced officer I’ve got in that department. I want you to go out there, find this thing, and figure out what it or they want.”
