Captain's Glory

3

S.S. BELLE REVE, VULCAN

STARDATE 58552.2

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have you court-martialed,” Admiral Janeway said. “In fact, I could use a good reason for not just chucking you out of the airlock right now.”

Captain James T. Kirk sat back on his bench in the narrow galley of the Belle Reve and realized he had no answer for the admiral-at least, not one that he’d accept if he were in her position.

He wasn’t surprised by Janeway’s frustration with him. He knew it had been building for several months, so he couldn’t even feign innocence, which was usually one of his better strategies.

He was guilty as charged and that was all there was to it.

A year ago, when he had been on board Captain Riker’s Titan, Janeway had given him the ship he now commanded. Then, it had been called the Calypso, but as the ship’s new master he’d changed her name to Belle Reve-Beautiful Dream.

What better name could there be for a ship that sailed among the stars? Except, perhaps, for Enterprise.

According to the central registries, the S.S. Belle Reve was a commercial freighter of Rigelian registry. Her main hull was a blunt-nosed cylindrical module about the same size as a single nacelle from an old Ambassador-class ship. She had a slightly tapered bulge at the rear of her ventral hull, and two swept-back, outboard warp nacelles. The nacelles were also cylindrical. To Kirk’s eye, they gave his ship the look of an antique.

But, more significantly, what the old-fashioned configuration hid was a cleverly engineered distributed-phaser system. Its critical components were spread throughout the ship so that they could be powered up without being detected. Binary quantum torpedoes shared the same characteristic: They didn’t go “live” until their warhead components were mated just two seconds before launch. Until that last moment of assembly, even the sensors on Jean-Luc Picard’s Enterprise would have trouble detecting such uniquely arrayed armaments.

When its Defiant-class warp engines were added to the mix, making the small ship vastly overpowered and exceedingly fast, all the ingredients for being one of Starfleet’s best Q-ships were in place.

In the vernacular of an earlier time, Kirk’s Belle Reve was a spy trawler that sailed where Starfleet chose not to fly its colors.

“I’m waiting,” Janeway said.

Kirk decided to rely on a tried-and-true technique: He answered the question he felt she should have asked him.

“I think I’ve done a good job of fulfilling my obligations to you.”

Janeway blinked as if she hadn’t heard him correctly.

“Captain,” she said, more than a hint of irritation in her tone, “I came all this way because you haven’t fulfilled your obligations.”

Kirk spoke lightly, but his words carried serious intent. “Is that what you really think? Or is that what Starfleet told you to say?”

Janeway leaned forward, punctuating her words by tapping her finger against the galley table. “I gave you this ship so you could be the eyes and ears of Starfleet where and when we can’t send an identifiable ship of our own.”

“You gave me this ship so I could investigate Spock’s disappearance.”

Janeway would not be deflected. “Captain Kirk… Ambassador Spock is dead.”

Kirk felt his chest tighten, but he restrained any show of frustration. It had been years since he had been subjected to Starfleet’s chain of command, even longer since he felt he owed it any particular allegiance.

“We don’t know that,” he said. The dream was vivid in his memory: Do I have your attention?

“I read your report about the events on Remus.”

“Then you also know Spock was absorbed by an unknown phenomenon– “

Janeway interrupted to correct him. “Disintegrated.”

Kirk continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “– and his fate remains undetermined.”

Janeway shook her head. “Is that what this has been about?” she asked. “You’re not just looking for the people responsible. You really think he’s still out there?” The admiral’s voice held both pity and annoyance. The combination was not lost on Kirk. But he didn’t take the bait.

“Of course I do,” he said. The dream wasn’t evidence he could share with her. But there was other proof. “I saw what Norinda was capable of. The shapeshifting– “

With a wave of her hand, Janeway cut him off again. “I know all this. The changing into clouds of dark smoke, mounds of black sand, cubes of different sizes…”

Kirk paused a moment, struggling to keep his vivid recollection of Spock’s disappearance, and the revulsion and the fear it came with, from weakening the case he knew he had to make. “Norinda controlled a technology-or natural abilities-beyond our capacity to define them. Spock might be dead. But he might just as well have been taken by an alien transporter.”

Janeway got up from her bench, then walked to the replicator to study its controls. Kirk understood that the admiral was trying to prevent herself from saying something she might regret. They were both attempting to restrain themselves.

Janeway punched the code for coffee, standard. “One more time,” she said. “You saw him disintegrated before your eyes.”

Kirk joined her by the replicator, waited until she’d taken her coffee mug. “I’ve seen Spock ‘disintegrated’ thousands of times in transporter beams.” He punched the controls for a Vulcan espresso-no caffeine.

“Then for all the times you’ve been ‘unavailable’ for special duty, why haven’t we found you heading back to the Romulan home system?”

Kirk held his coffee cup in a mock toast to Janeway. She merely cupped her own mug for warmth.

“Because,” Kirk said, “Norinda failed to provoke a civil war between Romulus and Remus and the Jolan Movement fell apart after her disappearance.” He took a sip of the hot liquid, detecting as always the loss of authenticity in replication. “As Spock would say, whatever her ultimate goal, logic suggests she’s trying to set up a new movement on another world.”

Janeway stared at him with something close to suspicion. “At your debriefing, you told the review board exactly what Norinda’s ultimate goal was.”

“I told the review board what Norinda said was her ultimate goal. There’s a difference.”

“What?” Janeway demanded.

Kirk stayed silent for a moment. He had originally encountered the shapeshifting alien life-form called Norinda in the early months of his first five-year mission as captain of the Enterprise, NCC-1701. She had lied to him then, told him a story about having escaped from “the Totality”– an ominous alien force that had somehow conquered the Andromeda Galaxy.

A lifetime later, he had met her again on Remus, where she claimed to lead a peace movement that had been banished from Romulus. But all the while, it was Norinda and her followers who’d been attempting to start the very civil war that she claimed to oppose.

“She told me she’d make the Romulans and the Remans want peace by exposing them to war,” Kirk said. “She said her goal was to leave both planets in ruins, with millions dead, because only then would the survivors realize the value of love.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

Kirk’s mind filled with images of all the different forms in which Norinda had appeared to him, remembering how she’d used some kind of subconscious telepathy to assume the appearance of the woman most desired by whomever she happened to speak with.

“She’s a monster,” Kirk said at last. “The only peace she can bring is that of the grave. She even appeared to my son as his mother.”

Kirk had had this discussion a year ago. He had settled it then. He settled it now. “I believe all Norinda wants is destruction. To her, the only world that can be at peace is a world without life.”

Janeway hesitated, then seemingly changed the subject of their conversation.

“Have you ever thought that Starfleet’s goals and yours might not be that far apart?”

“Admiral, if you’re looking for common ground, you’re not going to find it. I want to rescue Spock. Starfleet thinks he’s dead.”

“But it’s obvious to me that you’re trying to find Spock by tracking down Norinda. I suggest that’s where our goals converge.”

Kirk reconsidered what he knew of Janeway. She was shrewd, immensely capable. She had brought her ship and her crew back from the wilds of the Delta Quadrant with honor. Her promotion to the admiralty had been a foregone conclusion. He even found her quite attractive and thought he could find her more so, if she ever decided to stop being an admiral for a day.

But he also knew that she was more solidly connected to Starfleet than he had been or ever would be, now. Like his friend Jean-Luc, Kathryn Janeway could be relied upon to put the needs of Starfleet and the Federation first. Except, of course, in cases of egregious misconduct.

But for Janeway, in those circumstances for which there were no clear-cut divisions between right and wrong, Starfleet would always be right by default, until proven otherwise.

Which means, if Starfleet is searching for Norinda… Kirk paused in the midst of that thought.

“I’ve always suspected there was something you weren’t telling me,” he said. “The day you offered me this ship, I sensed it. Right now, I’m feeling it even more.”

“Now you’ve changed the subject,” Janeway said. She gave Kirk a tight smile.

“You’ve given me seven missions this past year. I took them all.”

“You completed four.”

“You called off my surveillance mission to the Neutral Zone before I could reach it. The Andorian political prisoner you asked me to ‘escort’ to Deep Space Nine died en route-complications of torture.”

“Suffered at the hands of the Klingons,” Janeway said as she carefully placed her untouched coffee on the galley countertop. “Not Starfleet.”

“So that only leaves one mission in contention,” Kirk said.

“There’s no contention. You were ordered to Inver Three. You refused to go. And a Starfleet covert observer team was lost as a result. Which brings us back to your court-martial.”

“My son is on this ship,” Kirk said. “My friends, Bones and Scotty. All of us civilians. Inver Three was unsafe. You needed to send in a recovery team. Not a spy ship.”

“You were the recovery team,” Janeway said accusingly. “An extraction team never would have made it through planetary defenses. But the Belle Reve wouldn’t have been questioned. Six men and two women would be alive today except for your refusal to obey orders.”

“If you had asked me, I would have gone. But I don’t put the innocent in harm’s way. And the Starfleet I know wouldn’t think of it.”

That was when Kirk decided he had had enough of explaining and defending himself-to Janeway, and to Starfleet. He turned his back on such reminders of his old life. He headed for the open door that led to the central corridor, and his new life.

Kirk stepped into the corridor, remembering to duck his head while passing through the small hatch opening; the painful lessons of a year on this cramped vessel had taught him to be more mindful. This main passageway-barely wide enough for two people to stand side by sidewas similarly constricted. Anyone taller than two meters had to contend with low-hanging overhead conduits and light fixtures.

Behind him, he heard the clanking of Janeway’s boots on the corridor’s metal-grid decking.

“Kirk-you can’t walk away from this. We had a deal.”

Kirk kept moving toward the interdeck ladder. “My deal was that I wouldn’t place my crew in danger.” He couldn’t say it more plainly than that. A few quick steps more and he reached the ladder leading up to the bridge. The Belle Reve had a single turbolift, but he preferred to climb whenever he could. The gym on the ship was little more than a treadmill with an erratic gravity adjustment.

“Captain Kirk! Get back here.”

Kirk shook his head as he looked up, one hand already on the ladder. “One of us might say something we’ll regret.”

“Your friends might be civilians, but you’re not.”

Janeway had reached the ladder. She put her hand over his. “I suspect you refused the mission to Inver Three because you were caught up in following some lead on Manassas.”

Kirk steeled himself not to shake off her hand. He had no wish to offend the admiral. But neither would he let her stop him. “This ship is mine to use as I wish between Starfleet missions. You told me that yourself.”

“Yes. Between missions. But if you refused one because you were on a mission of your own, that is unacceptable.”

Kirk felt Janeway’s hand give his own a slight push before it dropped away, freeing him.

He took a breath to center himself, was aware of the thrum of the ship’s warp generators, idling at standby, ready to burst into superluminal speeds at a single command from their captain. Kirk felt the pent-up energy of those engines move through him. He was unable to distinguish their needs from his own.

He had to keep moving.

Like his ship, he had been held in one place too long.

He relinquished his grasp on the ladder and turned to face Janeway. “I’ve said all I can say. I’ve filed my report. I’ve listened to you express Starfleet’s interpretation of events. And here we are.” Emotion was gone from him, and in that moment of clarity and reflection his thoughts turned once again to Spock. We’re life, Jim….

“You’ll never be able to court-martial me with what you have-even for a Starfleet tribunal, there’s too much room for reasonable doubt. So either take my ship from me now, or don’t. But let’s not waste any more time trying to resolve something that can’t be resolved.”

“You’re willing to give this up?” Janeway said with open disbelief. It was clear to Kirk she meant the Belle Reve.

“I can always get another ship,” he said, though he knew he’d be hard-pressed to find one with this vessel’s capabilities. “And my friends and my son will come with me. So I really have nothing of value to lose.”

Janeway took so long to reply that for a moment it seemed she’d given up. But she’d only changed strategy, and the rules of their engagement.

“What if I told you the Starfleet team on Inver Three didn’t get killed by rebels?”

Kirk didn’t know what point she was trying to make. “Then I’d say you still had a chance to get a recovery team in there to extract them.”

“We don’t know where they are.”

It was a simple statement, but there was something about the way Janeway said it that caught Kirk’s attention. He studied her, trying to read her expression. But the admiral had served many years with a Vulcan as well. Her self-control was the equal of his own.

“What I’m about to tell you is classified far above what you’re cleared for,” Janeway said.

Kirk forced himself to stay silent. If he was about to hear information Janeway thought it was necessary for him to know, how could he not be cleared for it? Of all of the ills of the past humanity had grown beyond, governmental bureaucracy remained as an echo of the dark ages.

“The entire negotiating team disappeared,” Janeway said. “Within days of stopping the civil war on Inver Three, and bringing both sides together, and pulling that world back into the Federation.”

Kirk was puzzled, and intrigued. Why was Janeway revealing this to him now? Especially since she had spent most of the past hour accusing him of complicity in the team’s death.

“A planet’s a big place,” Kirk said, his tone neutral, all his senses alert to detect whatever else it was that Janeway was hiding from him.

Janeway finally acknowledged their unspoken battle of wills by conceding. She smiled in resignation. “All right. So now, maybe Starfleet will have to court-martial both of us.”

Kirk shrugged, waiting, not sure if this was just another ploy on the admiral’s part. “You get used to it.” He regarded her with curiosity, waiting.

Janeway wasted no more of his time. “Over the past year and a half, one hundred and twenty-eight key Federation personnel have… vanished. If we count Ambassador Spock, it’s one hundred and twenty-nine.”

Irrational hope flared in Kirk. “A pattern?” he asked.

“Circumstantial,” Janeway cautioned. “But there is reason to believe that at least some of the disappearances are connected.”

Kirk’s mind raced as he tried to find something in all he had learned about Spock and Norinda and the Jolan Movement of Romulus and Remus. Something that would suggest a link to other events.

He could think of nothing.

“Why did you wait so long to tell me?” Kirk asked. Had he wasted a year looking for Spock without the information he needed?

“We don’t know who’s responsible,” Janeway admitted. “Starfleet Intelligence– “

“Intelligence?” Kirk was surprised to hear that department was involved.

“– is reluctant to declassify their investigations. They’re concerned whoever’s behind the disappearances might benefit from knowing that… we know nothing.”

Kirk made himself ask the obvious question. “Has Starfleet Intelligence conducted an investigation into Spock’s disappearance?”

Janeway nodded. “As part of their ongoing investigation of the other cases, they have.”

“And?” Kirk asked.

Janeway shook her head in exasperation. “I’ll say it once more-I think it’s time we worked together.”

Procedure over the welfare of individuals… Kirk felt the familiar heat of anger. Mindless rules of behavior… “I thought that’s what we were doing this past year.”

“I don’t make policy, Captain. And you do have a reputation for not playing by the rules.”

Kirk ignored the provocation to another argument. It was time to move on, though it appeared that, contrary to his first thoughts, he’d be moving on with Starfleet after all.

He put both hands on the ladder. “If Starfleet’s going to help look for Spock, I want my crew to hear everything. No more secrecy. No more lies.” Before Janeway could protest, Kirk started to climb. “I’ll see you on the bridge.”

By the time he’d reached A Deck, he understood exactly why someone would make one hundred twenty-nine Federation officials disappear over the past year and a half. Even without knowing their identities, Kirk was certain he would find an explanatory pattern in their professions and their areas of expertise-a pattern that would reveal why they were valuable to the Federation.

Which meant that somewhere an enemy was gathering its forces, and the capture of Spock was not just an act of personal revenge; it was the first strike in a war that might already have begun.