Captain's Glory

6

S.S. BELLE REVE, VULCAN

STARDATE 58552.2

Before the destruction of the Sovereign had even registered in his conscious thoughts, Kirk dove to the tactical console to raise shields.

There are few safer places for a spacecraft to be than in orbit of Vulcan, so shields for most ships are routinely set to the lowest navigational settings-enough to deal with any errant orbital detritus that has escaped detection by Vulcan Space Central.

But a seven-hundred-meter-long starship exploding within a kilometer of the Belle Reve would produce debris of a different magnitude.

The bridge of the small ship vibrated as her power plants ramped up from standby to full output. In those few seconds, Kirk stared at the terrible image on his main screens: Janeway’s starship was so large, it appeared to disintegrate in slow motion.

The explosion had begun in the lower engineering hull, almost in line with the wide, winglike pylons that anchored the nacelles.

That location instantly told Kirk that something had gone wrong with the Sovereign’s warp drive.

Kirk could only watch as secondary detonations raced along the pylons, twisting them and the nacelles they supported. The port nacelle cracked open as streams of antimatter vented through its blue Cerenkov emitters, triggering multiple explosions wherever the hypervelocity clouds of antiprotons made contact with the physical structure of the ship. A glowing haze began to form around the nacelles as the antimatter continued to react with the great ship’s lost atmosphere.

For the first few moments of destruction, the main saucer remained intact. Kirk saw a string of smaller explosions-evenly spaced bright pinpoint flashes-stitch across the saucer attachment points.

That meant automatic separation had been triggered-a desperate maneuver under the conditions Kirk saw. There would have been no time to warn the crew. Whoever was in the corridors or turbolifts when the separation charges detonated would already be dead, blown into space the instant the saucer detached.

In just those few seconds that time seemed to slow, Kirk felt the ship’s death as if it were his own. He knew what he had to do. So did his friends.

Kirk’s hands worked the flight controls to move the Belle Reve in through the expanding vortex of tumbling debris.

Scott was at his engineering station, bringing the sensors and tractor beam online.

“I’ll be in sickbay,” McCoy said, no quaver in his voice, no hint of complaint.

Kirk kept his eyes on his controls, addressed his son. “Joseph, get to the transporter. Whoever Scotty beams in, you take him to Bones.”

Kirk heard a hoarse “Yessir.” Then the turbolift doors puffed shut and it was just the captain and the engineer. Their mission: to save whomever they could from a crew of more than one thousand.

Over six hundred died that day.

In two hours of rescue operations, the Belle Reve beamed in twelve survivors.

Kirk located one in space and Scott beamed her aboard in time. She’d managed to get partially into an environmental suit, sealing her helmet, but having no time to don her gloves. Registering the loss of atmosphere from her open sleeves, her suit remained pressurized by inflating emergency cuffs around her forearms. Exposed to vacuum, the soft tissue of her hands had swollen grotesquely to twice its normal size.

Two more were discovered located in an intact compartment, once part of the hangar deck. The pressure door had slammed shut the instant the separation charges blew. No hope existed for their friends who’d been on the wrong side of the door.

The other nine were transported out of sealed rooms in the Sovereign’s saucer. They’d been in the lower decks where the connecting corridors had been opened to space and the emergency containment shields had failed.

Of the twelve, most had suffered only minor burns. Remarkably, McCoy reported, even the crew member with the cruelly distended hands could be expected to recover within a few weeks.

By the time the last survivor was safely on board Kirk’s ship, Vulcan Space Central was in full control, completing a well-coordinated rescue operation with typical Vulcan efficiency. Small hunter-seeker craft darted among the debris, scanning for life signs, sending their results to T’Karath-class hospital ships equipped with multiple transporter stations.

During the extraction of survivors, emergency salvage vessels used tractor beams to stabilize the largest intact sections of the ship and any debris large enough to survive entry into the Vulcan atmosphere.

To Kirk, the intense two-hour rescue passed as if only minutes. But the moment the Vulcans informed him that all life signs had been accounted for and asked him to withdraw, Kirk immediately headed down to sickbay.

He had to know.

“Admiral Janeway,” Kirk said as he entered the crowded medical compartment where McCoy tended to the lucky twelve.

Joseph was working at McCoy’s side, bringing him the medkits he needed, cleaning up beside him.

A part of Kirk noted his son’s actions, pleased, but his concern for the admiral overwhelmed any parental pride. “Does anyone know what happened to her?”

No one from the Sovereign did.

They recalled an announcement from the exec telling the crew to prepare for immediate departure. Less than a minute later, they’d felt the explosion-about the time, Kirk knew, it had taken for the warp engines to come online in the standard run-up to operational power.

The main lights had flickered out then. Gravity failed next. More explosions followed.

The darkness and confusion had vanished suddenly for the twelve survivors as they rematerialized on Kirk’s ship.

That was the extent of their knowledge. None of them knew Janeway’s fate.

Disappointed, Kirk collected the survivors’ identification codes, to transmit them to the Starfleet Joint Operations Center, Vulcan. Returning to his bridge, he discovered that Scott had already been making inquiries.

Kathryn Janeway’s official status was “missing.” She had not been rescued; neither had her body been found. The Vulcans calculated that it could take days before all the salvaged debris could be examined and scanned. From the force of the explosions that had torn through the starship, they also stated that it was possible not all bodies would be recovered.

Given what Janeway had told him about the investigation into the unexplained disappearances, Kirk couldn’t help but wonder if some of the missing might have vanished not by explosion but by whatever phenomenon had claimed Spock.

Inexorably caught by the mysteries wheeling within mysteries, Kirk flew his vessel to a Vulcan ship of the line, the Soval. Docking was not required. The Vulcans beamed the Sovereign survivors directly from the Belle Reve’s small sickbay and the adjacent corridor where McCoy had set out cots.

It was over.

Kirk felt the unreality of the moment. No doubt within the corridors of Starfleet Operations on Vulcan an investigation was already under way. Encrypted communiques were flashing back and forth between Vulcan and Earth. Starfleet vessels throughout the quadrants were being issued new orders.

War plans were being made.

But Kirk and his crew, his friends, were isolated from the action. Mere spectators, if that.

Kirk bridled at the thought. But then, wasn’t that what he had wanted? To go his own way, and not be subjected to the whims of Starfleet?

“What now, Captain?”

Kirk looked over to Scott at his engineering station, and for one of the few times in his life, didn’t have an immediate answer.

I’m losing my command edge, Kirk thought. That was one of the characteristics shared by all great leaders: the ability to make quick decisions. Provided it was accompanied by the wisdom to change course when new facts came to light.

“Lay in a course to Earth,” Kirk said at last. He’d make contact with Starfleet Intelligence, see what he could find out about their efforts to find a pattern to the disappearances. He’d follow any trail that might lead him to Spock.

The turbolift doors opened and McCoy and Joseph came onto the bridge.

Kirk turned in his chair. “How well do you remember Earth?” he asked his son. Joseph had been much younger the last time they had visited.

Joseph brightened. “I remember the horses.” They’d gone to a ranch resort in Iowa near the site of the Kirk family farm, on the outskirts of Riverside. But the land was now a world heritage park, and not even the foundations of the house or the barn had remained. Kirk recalled that, in an earlier time, there’d even been a statue of himself nearby. But that was gone, too. The old saying was true: Fame was fleeting. Nor could it compare with the simple joy of riding with his child.

Kirk dismissed his reverie, gestured at the container Joseph carried. “What’s that?”

“Dunno,” Joseph said as he looked to McCoy for assistance.

“The Soval beamed over medical supplies to replace what we used,” McCoy said. “This came with them.”

Joseph held the container out to Kirk. “It’s addressed to you, Dad.”

Kirk took it, curious. It was a basic shipping package, large enough for a few books, perhaps a pair of boots. But it was light, almost as if it were empty.

He tapped the container’s label and it switched on, displaying his name and his ship, but giving no indication of the sender.

“The Vulcans beamed this on board?” Kirk asked.

McCoy nodded. “Whatever it is, that means it’s at least safe.”

Kirk looked for the tab pull, gave it a tug, and the molecular seal that ringed the container flashed once, dividing the package into top and bottom.

Kirk slipped off the top, looked inside, then carefully removed the object that was in the container, held it up and to the side.

It was a triangle of smooth metal, unidentifiable in terms of function or planet of origin. But Kirk had seen it often enough to know exactly what it was.

His ship had a visitor.

“You’re on my bridge,” Kirk said to the object, “and only my crew is present.”

At that, he felt the object slip from his fingers as it became fully active, and after a few moments in which the air around it wavered and grew optically dense, a holographic duplicate of Doctor Lewis Zimmerman took shape on the bridge. The figure was clothed in a Starfleet uniform to which the triangular object-a highly advanced holographic emitter-was now attached on the upper left arm, just below the shoulder.

“Captain Kirk, I presume,” the Emergency Medical Hologram said. “We meet again.”

“Doctor.” This wasn’t just a holographic duplicate of Doctor Zimmerman, it was the duplicate-the EMH from the Starship Voyager, who had developed self-awareness and sentience on that vessel’s perilous journey. “I’m glad you survived.”

“So am I,” the hologram replied. Then he beamed at McCoy and Joseph. “Doctor McCoy, always a pleasure. And Joseph. The admiral was right, you have grown.”

It took Kirk but an instant to process the Doctor’s seemingly innocuous observation. If the Doctor had had time to speak to Admiral Janeway about Joseph, then-

“Janeway survived?”

The hologram’s mood became serious. “Barely. She’s on the Soval, having her lungs resurfaced.” He glanced around at his audience, which now included Scott, who had joined the others by Kirk’s chair. “That information, of course, is classified.”

Kirk’s sense of isolation deepened as he studied the hologram. As sophisticated as the Doctor’s illusion of life was, it was impossible to see any of the almost imperceptible tics and other body signals that could be used to judge someone’s intent and veracity. “May I ask why?”

“As soon as the admiral beamed aboard, she was called to engineering. There was something wrong with the warp core. She gave orders to shut it down, but the controls didn’t respond.”

“It was just powering up,” Scott said sharply. “It doesn’t make sense that ye’d get a runaway reaction that quickly.”

“She was in a turbolift car when the core breached.”

“That was no core breach,” Scott said.

The Doctor corrected himself, and at least this time Kirk could see it wasn’t something the hologram did often.

“When disaster struck,” the Doctor amended.

“That’s what saved her?” McCoy asked.

“The car was blown free, leaking badly, but it held its atmospheric integrity long enough for the admiral to be beamed to a rescue vessel.”

“You still haven’t explained why Janeway’s survival is classified,” Kirk said.

“The admiral believes that she was on her way to becoming one of the ‘disappeared.’” The Doctor regarded Kirk with interest. “She told me you’d understand.”

“I think I do,” Kirk said, deliberately offering no further explanation. “But did she explain why she felt that way?”

The hologram hesitated, frowning as if he weren’t convinced of the accuracy of what he was about to say. “Apparently, just before the breach– ” He looked at Scott before the engineer could interrupt. “– the disaster, the admiral claims to have seen a ‘black tendril’ emerge from the turbolift control panel. She said it happened just as she was using her communicator to speak to engineering, as if… as if the tendril had been searching for her, and found her only when she transmitted.”

Kirk immediately tried to fit Janeway into the pattern that linked at least some of the missing. “Doctor, is the admiral involved in any project having to do with warp research?”

The holographic physician gave Kirk a questioning look. “At present, she’s the acting director of Starfleet Intelligence.”

Kirk’s eyes widened in genuine surprise. “She never said… never told me…”

The hologram shrugged as if to say that whatever Janeway had told Kirk in the past was no longer important.

“Suffice it to say that conditions have changed,” he said briskly. “The admiral is on her way back to Earth and prefers to let our enemy believe she’s dead.”

Kirk stood up, too agitated to remain sitting, passive. As director of Starfleet Intelligence, Janeway had known far more than she had ever admitted to him. The implication was blatantly clear. Once again he’d been used by Starfleet, even more thoroughly than he had attempted to use them. He was in no mood to appreciate the irony of the situation.

“Then the Belle Reve is going to Earth, too. I need to speak to Janeway.”

The holographic doctor followed Kirk to the conn station, his illusion of reality so perfect that his boot heels clacked across the deck.

“The admiral has other orders for you.”

“She’ll have to give them to me in person.”

The hologram smiled broadly. “She told me you’d say that.”

“I’ve never doubted her ability to judge character.” Kirk called up the navigational controls. Plotting a standard course from Vulcan to Earth would take less than a minute.

“Before you do anything rash,” the hologram said, “wouldn’t you like to hear what her orders are?”

Kirk was about to tell the hologram what he could do with Janeway’s orders when he caught a glimpse of Joseph watching him.

His son was rebellious enough without seeing that behavior modeled by his father. Kirk reluctantly decided against open confrontation.

“All right,” he conceded, “tell me.”

“Admiral Janeway orders you to find Ambassador Spock-on Vulcan.”

Kirk felt instant anger and excitement. Anger that Janeway had obviously been holding information back from him. Excitement that he was about to learn something that might lead him closer to Spock.

In as even a tone as he could manage, he asked if Janeway had reason to believe Spock was on Vulcan.

“No one knows,” the Doctor said, and Kirk could almost hear a tinge of sympathy in the hologram’s tone. “But our enemy surely is.”