Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (65 page)

Communications within Starfleet Command continued to deteriorate. Sarek could barely make out the reflections of the screens’ blurry images. Humans scurried back and forth in futile activity. Chief Medical Officer Chapel had been on duty for nearly forty-eight hours. She slumped in a chair with her face in her hands. Fleet Commander Cartwright clenched his hands around the railing of the observation platform, tense with strain.

Sarek had spent the past few hours preparing himself, permitting himself a moment to consider his successes and releasing his regrets. Only one remained: no reserve power could be spared, no communications channel remained clear enough, for him to transmit a message to Vulcan, to Amanda. He had written to her, but he doubted she would ever receive his message. All he wished to tell her must remain forever unsaid.

“Sir!” Janice Rand turned toward Cartwright. Her rain-streaked image wavered in the glass. “I’m picking up a faint transmission—it’s Admiral Kirk!”

“On-screen!” Cartwright said.

Sarek turned from the shadow world of the reflections to the real world behind him. The blurry image on the screen was hardly sharper than its reflection, and Kirk’s words came through utterly garbled. The picture faded to nothingness, to a resonance of the probe.

“Satellite reserve power,” Cartwright said. “Now.”

The screen flickered, cleared, blurred. Sarek made out Kirk’s form, and the control boards of the Klingon fighter ship…and the vague silhouette behind him, unmistakably of a Vulcan, unmistakably Spock. Kirk said something, but static muffled his words.

He is coming to Earth,
Sarek thought.
All ships have been ordered away. But instead of obeying, he will come. He has been ordered to Earth. But instead of disobeying, he will come.

James Kirk was incapable of standing by while his homeworld died. But Sarek also knew that there was no logical way to save it. The Klingon ship would face the probe and be destroyed. So, too, Kirk and all his companions would die.

“Analysis,” Kirk said. His voice rose and faded in the static and the resonance. A strange cry whistled and moaned in the background. For a moment Sarek thought it was the probe, and then he realized it was not. “Probe call…Captain Spock’s opinion…extinct species…humpback whale…proper response…”

His voice and image both failed, but Sarek had already gleaned Spock’s explanation of the probe’s intent and desire. A bright stroke of pride touched the elder Vulcan’s equanimity.

“Stabilize!” Cartwright exclaimed. “Emergency reserve!”

“Do you read me?” Kirk said clearly. His image snapped into focus, then immediately deteriorated. “Starfleet, if you read, we are going to attempt time travel. We are computing our trajectory…”

“What in heaven’s name—?” the fleet commander said.

The power failed utterly.

“Emergency reserve!” Cartwright said again, his voice hoarse.

“There
is
no emergency reserve,” the comm officer said.

The groan of tortured glass and metal cut through the scream of the wind and the pounding of rain and waves. Sarek understood what Kirk proposed to do. Somehow, in the madness of its desperation, the plan possessed an element of rationality.

“Good luck, Kirk,” Sarek said. “To you, and to all who go with you.”

The shoring struts on the window failed. The glass imploded, spraying cold sharp shards. Cries of fear and freezing needles of sleet and wind formed Sarek’s last perception.

The sun blazed across the viewscreen. The
Bounty
plunged toward it. The light grew so intense that the screen blacked it out, creating an artificial eclipse. Tongues of glowing gas, the corona, stretched in a halo around the sun’s edge.

“No response from Earth,” Uhura said. “The solar wind is too intense. We’ve lost contact.”

“Maybe it’s just as well.”

The artificial gravity of the
Bounty
wavered. The acceleration of impulse engines on full punished the ship. The solar storms stretched and grasped for the
Bounty
as it sped toward a fiery perihelion just above the surface of the star.

“Ready to engage computer, Admiral,” Spock said.

“What’s our target in time?” Jim asked.

“The late twentieth century.”

“Surely you can be more specific.”

“Not with this equipment. I have had to program some of the variables from memory.”

“Just how many variables are you talking about?”

“Availability of fuel components, change in mass of the vessel as it moves through a time continuum at relativistic speeds, and the probable location of humpback whales. In this case, the Pacific basin.”

“You’ve programmed that from memory?”

“I have,” Spock said.

Beside him, McCoy looked at the ceiling in supplication. “ ‘Angels and ministers of grace, defend us.’ ”

“Hamlet,”
Spock said. “Act one, scene four.”

“Mister Spock,” Jim said with some asperity, “none of us has doubts about your memory. Engage computer. Prepare for warp speed.”

Sulu collected the
Bounty
for transition. “Ready, sir.”

“Shields, Mister Chekov.”

“Shields up, Admiral.”

“May fortune favor the foolish,” Jim said softly.

“Virgil,” Spock said. “The
Aeneid.
But the quote—”

“Never mind, Spock!” Jim exclaimed. “Engage computers! Mister Sulu, warp speed!”

The warp engines impelled the ship forward. The light of the sun’s corona shimmered. The
Bounty
plunged through successive bands of spectral color as the frequency of the light increased through yellow, to intense blue-white, to a penetrating actinic violet.

“Warp two,” Sulu said.

The
Bounty
shuddered within the drag and twist of warp drive, within the magnetic field and the gravity of the sun.

“Warp three…”

“Steady as she goes,” Jim said.

“Warp five…warp seven…”

A tentacle of the corona reached out and entwined the
Bounty,
squeezing it mercilessly.

“I don’t think she’ll hold together, sir!” Scott’s voice on the speaker sounded faint and tinny. The ship struggled for its life.

“No choice now, Scotty,” Jim said.

“Sir, heat shields at maximum!”

“Warp nine,” Sulu said. “Nine point two…nine point three…”

“Mister Sulu, we need breakaway speed!”

“Hang on, sir…nine point seven…point eight…breakaway threshold…”

“Steady,” Jim said. “Steady…”

A mass of data swept over the viewing area. It would be close, all too close, too close to the sun and too close to the speed, with no margin left.

“Now, Mister Sulu!”

The heat of the sun overrode the shields. A tendril of acceleration insinuated itself through the gravity.

The
Bounty
blasted out of its own dimensions of space and plunged into time.

Jim remembered…

Glimpses of his past returned to him at random. He saw the
Enterprise
exploding out of space and burning in the atmosphere of Genesis. He saw David Marcus lying dead among the ruins of his dreams. He saw Spock as a youth—on Genesis, Spock had aged. But Jim’s memory crept backward and the aging reversed. The Vulcan’s living body grew younger. As the images flowed faster and faster, Jim watched all his friends become younger and younger. Spock had changed least, in the time that Jim had known him, for the life of a Vulcan spanned more time than any human’s. McCoy lost the lines that years in space had drawn in his face, till he looked as he had when James T. Kirk, lieutenant’s stripes fresh on his sleeves, first met him. Jim remembered Mister Scott, who had been doubtful at first of a brash young captain’s ability to command the finest ship in Starfleet. He remembered Carol Marcus, as she had been when he returned her to Earth, as she had been when they parted so many years before, as she was when they first met.

Jim’s mother smiled and shook her head, bemused by some exploit, and as he watched she too grew younger, though she seemed hardly to change whether the years passed forward or backward.

Jim recalled Uhura the evening he met her, singing an Irish folk song and playing a small harp; he recalled Sulu, a youth just out of the Academy, beating him soundly in a fencing match; he recalled meeting Chekov, an ensign on duty during low watch, when late at night Jim haunted the bridge of his new ship. He saw his nephew, Peter Kirk, change from a young man at peace with himself and his past to a young boy, grief-stricken after the loss of both his parents.

And among those clear images drifted memories fainter and more ghostly. Jim saw his sister-in-law, Aurelan, dying in shock as the parasitic creatures of Deneva took over her mind. He saw his older brother, Sam, already dead of the same awful infestation. And yet he also saw them on their way to Deneva, in happier times, and he saw Sam as a youth, laughing, challenging him to a race across the fields of the Iowa farm; as a boy, climbing to their tree house; and as a child, looking down at him, one of the first memories Jim Kirk could recall. He saw his friend Gary Mitchell, mad with power, dying in a rock slide on an alien planet, and at the same time he saw him as an ambitious lieutenant, and as a wild midshipman their first year at the Academy. Jim heard echoes of their discussions: what they would do, where they would go, and all that they would achieve.

And Jim caught a quick, vague glimpse of his father, George Samuel Kirk, a remote and solitary man, who seemed alone even when he was with his family.

Finally he saw nothing but a long and featureless gray time.

A tremendous noise roused him from his fugue. The ship had survived its plunge through solar winds. Heat penetrated from the
Bounty
’s seared skin and pooled in the control chamber. Sweat trickled down Jim’s back. The instruments showed all systems within the limits of normalcy. Everyone else on the bridge—even Spock—gazed dreamily into nothingness. The temperature began to fall as the ship radiated energy back into space.

“Mister Sulu,” Jim said. He received no reply. “Mister Sulu!” Sulu glanced around, startled from his own reverie. “Aye, sir?” Jim watched as they all drew themselves back from their reveries to now…but when was
now?

“What is our condition?”

Sulu glanced at his control panel. “Braking thrusters have fired, sir.”

“Picture, please.”

A blue and white globe rotated lazily, its clouds parting here and there to reveal familiar continents.

“Earth,” Jim said softly. “But when?” At least they had outdistanced the probe, for the probe’s impenetrable, roiling cloud cover no longer enclosed the planet. “Spock?”

“Judging by the pollution content of the atmosphere, I believe we have arrived at the late twentieth century.”

“Well done, Mister Spock.”

“Admiral!” Uhura exclaimed. “I’m picking up whale songs on long-range sensors!” She patched the signal into the speakers. The eerie cries and moans and whistles filled the control chamber.

“Home in on the strongest signal,” Jim said. “Mister Sulu, descend from orbit.”

“Admiral, if I may,” Spock said. “We are undoubtedly already visible to the tracking devices of this time.”

“Quite right, Spock. Mister Chekov, engage cloaking device.”

Chekov complied. The
Bounty
remained visible inside itself, yet it lost a certain substantiality. Jim had a brief impression of riding toward a phantom planet in a phantom ship. Perhaps McCoy should have named the Klingon fighter
Flying Dutchman.

The
Bounty
swept down out of space, drawing its wings into their sleek and streamlined atmospheric configuration. The ship bit into the air, slowing as it used friction and drag to help its braking.

The leading edges of its wings glowed with heat. Ionized molecules of gas rippled from the heat shields over the bow. The
Bounty
passed into night. The ship rode a fiery wave toward Earth, a brilliant shooting star in the dawn sky.

“We’ve crossed the terminator into night,” Sulu said.

“Homing in on the west coast of North America,” Spock said.

“The individual whale song is getting stronger. This is strange, Admiral. The song is coming from San Francisco—”

“From the city?” Jim said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Unless they’re stranded in the bay,” Sulu said. “Or—held captive?”

“It’s the only one I can pick up,” Uhura said. “And it’s being broadcast. But there’s no way to tell if it’s live or from a recording.”

“Is it possible…” Jim said. “Is it possible that they’re already extinct in this time?”

“They are not yet extinct,” Spock said.

“Then why can’t Uhura find more than one?” Jim snapped.

“Because,” Spock said evenly, “this is the wrong time of year for humpbacks to sing.”

“Then why—”

“I do not know, Admiral. Information on great whales is severely limited in our time. Much has been lost, and much was never learned. May I suggest that we begin by discovering the origin of these signals?”

“Admiral!” Scott’s voice overrode the song of the whale on the speakers. “Ye and Mister Spock—I need ye in the engine room.”

Jim rose immediately. “Continue approach,” he said, and headed out of the control chamber. Spock followed at a more dignified pace.

When Spock entered the engine subroom beside the power chamber, he understood the trouble before Scott spoke. The glow of dilithium crystals should have provided a brilliant illumination. Instead, the transparent power chamber radiated only the dimmest of multicolored light from the planes and angles of the crystalline mass. The dilithium now consisted of a crystal lattice changing into a quasicrystalline form. The crystals were diseased. As Spock watched, the plague spread. It was as if diamonds were decomposing into graphite or coal. For the
Bounty
’s purposes, the dilithium crystal was essential, the dilithium quasicrystal utterly useless.

“They’re givin’ out,” Scott said. “Decrystallizin’. Ye can practically see ’em changin’ before ye. After a point, the crystal is so compromised that ye canna pull any energy from it at all.”

“How soon before that happens, Mister Scott?” Kirk said. “Give me a round figure.”

Scott considered. “Twenty-four hours, give or take, stayin’ cloaked. After that, Admiral, we’ll be visible, or dead in the water. More likely both. We willna have enou’ power to break back out of Earth’s gravity. I willna even mention gettin’ back home.”

Kirk glared at the crystals. Spock wondered if he thought that the force of his anger could make them shift their energy states in an impossible spontaneous transformation.

“I can’t believe we’ve come this far, only to be stopped,” Kirk said. “I won’t believe we’ll be stopped.” He chewed thoughtfully on his thumbnail. “Scotty, can’t you recrystallize the dilithium?”

“Nay,” Scott said. “I mean, aye, Admiral, ’tis theoretically possible, but even in our time we wouldna do it. ’Tis far easier, never mind cheaper, to go and mine new dilithium. The recrystallization equipment, ’twould be too dangerous to leave lyin’ abou’.”

“There
is
a twentieth-century possibility,” Spock said. During his brief study of his mother’s species’ history and culture, he had been particularly intrigued by the human drive, one might almost say instinct, to leave extremely dangerous equipment “lyin’ abou’.”

“Explain,” Kirk said.

“If memory serves,” Spock said, “human beings carried on a dubious flirtation with nuclear fission reactors, both for energy production and for the creation of weapons of war. This in spite of toxic side effects, the release of noxious elements such as plutonium, and the creation of dangerous wastes that still exist on Earth. The fusion era allowed these reactors to be replaced. But at this time, some should remain in operation.”

“Assuming that’s true, how do we get around the toxic side effects?”

“We could build a device to collect the high-energy photons safely; we could then inject the photons into the dilithium chamber, causing crystalline restructure. Theoretically.”

“Where would we find these reactors? Theoretically?”

Spock considered. “The twentieth-century humans placed their land-based reactors variously in remote areas of low population, or on fault lines. Naval vessels also used nuclear power. Given our destination, I believe this latter possibility offers the most promise.”