Star Trek: The Original Series - 082 - Federation (11 page)

“What, exactly, is Plan B?” Cochrane asked, beginning, in spite ot’ himself and their situation, to feel the stirrings of excitement as the whistle of air around the Rolls diminished. The car had leveled out and was now dropping straight down. What seemed to be a large curved wall, unlit, blocked out the lights in the next powered grid, about a kilometer distant. Cochrane felt as if they were descending into an enormous well.

“Controlled panic,” Sir John said briskly. “Since we can’t get you out by regular means, we shall resort to something a bit more, shall we say, unorthodox.” The inertial field around the car winked out as it came within a meter of the ground. Cochrane rocked once, then felt the limo bounce as the wheels made contact.

Sir John checked his watch, a golden Piaget from which a small pattern of red bars was holographically projected. It was an astronomer’s watch, at least half a century old, from a time when stargazers worked in the dark. actually peering through telescopes with their own eyes, instead of letting computers reconstruct images. The pale red bars would not interfere with any observer’s night vision.

“Just about now,” Sir John said, “those drug-addled zombies will have gotten word to their commanders about our escape. But when they check for air traffic, we won’t be there.” Sir John gestured with his cane. “Well, get out, young fellow, we’re here.” Cochrane pressed the Open control and this time the door swung up without being overridden by the chauffeur. The oppressive humid heat of London in June enveloped him and made it difficult to breathe. Humidity, thankfully, was not a problem on Centauri B II, where most water came from underground reservoirs and there was only a single ocean, the Welcoming Sea, which was no more than ten percent of the planet’s surface. Cochrane thought wistfully of the cool, dry air of his home.

“And where, exactly, is ‘here’?” Cochrane asked as he looked around. They were ringed by a tall circular structure. Looking up at the dull orange glow of the low clouds reflecting the fires and streetlights of London, he could see that they had entered the structure through a large, irregular hole in its roof, at least a hundred meters overhead. But with the limo’s running lights extinguished, there was not enough illumination to see what kind of a structure it was.

“As I recall from an interview you once gave to the Times,” Sir John said as he walked around the Rolls to join Cochrane, “you’ve been here several times before. As a child, I believe.” The chauffeur stepped out of the limo, being careful to keep the interior lights switched off. Cochrane looked around again, his eyes slowly adjusting to the lack of light. It came back to him in a flash of recognition.

“Battersea Stadium.” he said with a long-forgotten sense of wonder. He heard his mother’s voice complete the timeworn phrase, “Home of the London Kings.” “Nail on the head,” Sir John said approvingly. “Ghastly game though. Can’t say I’m sorry to see it go.” Cochrane peered into the darkness, wishing he could see more.

Back in the thirties, his mother had brought him here to watch baseball games. Sitting in these stands, eating roasted peanuts and battered fish and cold greasy chips, and staring at the men and women in white who were running around in incomprehensible patterns on the artificial grass were some of his earliest memories.

Knowing what had happened to baseball, he guessed the stadium had been shut down for years, even before the Optimum had imposed restrictions on public events.

“Mr. Cochrane,” the chauffeur asked, “do they have baseball on Alpha CentauriT’ Cochrane looked at her closely for the first time. She was surprisingly young, glossy brown hair sleeked under her cap, expression serious. She reminded him of someone he had met long ago. But there was something about the set of her large, dark eves. even in the gloom, that also reminded him of Sir John.

‘Lacrosse, mostly,” Cochrane said as he held out his hand. u ‘Call me Zefram, Ms…. ?” She shook his hand politely. “Monica, please. Monica Burke.” u ‘Granddaughter,” Sir John confirmed. “A year away from graduating medical school when the bloody Optimum closed the universities.”
‘There’s a wonderful medical college in Copernicus City,” Cochrane said. “I toured it when I was on the moon. Very inspiring.” Monica Burke frowned. “Can’t get travel papers.” She took off her cap and ran her hand across her thick, coiled braids. “And besides. Grandfather and his friends need an errand girl from time to time.” “And a doctor,” Sir John added, standing next to his granddaughter. “‘From time to time,’ the network has run-ins with the Optimum, and all weapons injuries must be reported to the movcment’s headquarters.” Cochrane sighed. It was like living in a war zone down here. But as Brack would say, when had it been any other way? “May I ask what we’re waiting for?” Cochrane could hear the smile in Sir John’s voice, even if he couldn’t see it on his face. “A slightly more direct route back home.” “An orbital transfer plane?” Cochrane said in disbelief. “Landing here?”

Sir John put his arm around his granddaughter. The smile was still in his voice. “Not quite, but you’ve got the right idea. You just wait.” Then, shockingly, for the first time in thirty-six years, since the playing of the final game of the last World Series before a solemn crowd of only three hundred die-hard fans, the night-lights of Battersea Stadium flared on, bathing the stained and tattered artificial playing field with harsh blue light.

Cochrane, Monica, and Sir John threw up their hands to shield their suddenly blinded eyes.

“The fools!” Sir John breathed. “They don’t need lights to land!” Cochrane tried to scan the opening in the torn fabric of the stadium’s roof, but it was hidden in darkness by the contrast with the blazing lights that ringed the stands.

“We didn’t wire this place,” Monica said in matching alarm.

She moved in front of Sir John. “Get into the car, Grandfather.

We’ll have to—” A precise line of baseball-sized explosions stitched across the field at the front of the Rolls, ripping across the gleaming black hood over the engine compartment, shattering the Flying Lady hood ornament, and continuing on to the ground on the other side. Coolant vapor vented explosively from the punctured metal.

A shrill grinding noise rose sharply as the kinetic-storage flywheel tore free from its severed moorings.

Years spent in space had honed Cochrane’s reflexes to emergency situations and instantly he grabbed Monica and Sir John and shoved them behind him.

Then the stadium’s announcement system blared into life, and on three sides gigantic viewscreens flickered with the first image they had carried for decades. Despite the failure of a quarter of the pixels on the screens, the striking face of the man who looked down from them was unmistakable. Colonel Adrik Thorsen.

“Attention on the field,” Thorsen said, his hoarse voice boom-ing from all directions at once. “Under the provisions of the Emergency Measures Act of 2076, you are under arrest. Those who resist will be contained. Those who cooperate will be dealt with under optimal conditions.” “Monster,” Sir John shouted, shaking with anger or fear, Cochrane could not tell which. But Cochrane agreed with the assessment, and at that moment, Cochrane saw his future clearly: he would never leave Earth again.

U.S.S. ENTERPRISE NCC-1701 IN TRANSIT TO BABEL Stardate 3850.1 Earth Standard: Nevember 2267

For Kirk, there was no mistaking the disapproval in Spock’s tone.

“Captain, there is a fine line between withholding the truth and lying. It may well be that that line has been crossed.” Though under strict doctor’s orders not to undertake strenuous activity, Spock was in uniform again. McCoy had hurriedly discharged him from sickbay while Kirk had met with Admiral Kabreigny. It was ship’s morning now, and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had gathered in the relative privacy of the captain’s quarters. Kirk’s meeting with the admiral—confrontation, really —had not gone well, as he had just recounted for his friends. And, according to the admiral, he thought, fellow conspirators.

“I would never lie to Command,” Kirk said coldly. The tension between the captain and his first officer had been slowly escalating through their discussion. They had had differences of opinion in the past, and their friendship, in part, grew from the understanding that addressing those differences often led to a new course of thought or action, becoming a learning experience for two minds dedicated to the pursuit of the best of which they were capable.

But Kirk’s handling of their unexpected discovery of Zefram cochrane was threatening to become a real division between them. offering no hope of conciliation.

For once, though, McCoy was the peacemaker. “We know you’d never lie, Jim. But what we all agreed to six months ago just
Joesn’t seem to apply anymore.” Kirk made a fist and went to pound the bookshelf beside his desk. But he stopped the action at the last instant so that he gently tapped it instead, barely disturbing the antique books and statu-ary arranged on it. This was not the time to lose control, no matter how badly the wearing off of the tri-ox compound was affecting him. He felt as if he needed to sleep for a week, but he was the only one still standing in the room and he was determined to keep it that way. These men were his friends, but at times like these. his command of this ship must always take precedence.

“I gave Cochrane my word that I wouldn’t tell anyone we had found him,” Kirk stated flatly. “And I won’t.” McCoy was getting tired of the argument. “But you already did, Jim. Your personal log. You set it all out there. finding Cochrane… what happened to the commissioner… everything.” “That log is for the historians,” Kirk said. “It’s sealed in the Starfleet Archives. Not to be opened for a century.” It had seemed such an elegant solution at the time, Kirk remembered. Even Spock had approved, if reluctantly.

Under Starfleet regulations, log officers were required to record all details of activities relating to their duties. But Kirk had argued to McCoy and Spock that their meeting with Cochrane did not fall under those standing orders.

Clearly, their mission of stardate 3219 had been to transport Commissioner Hedford to the Enterprise, treat her for Sakuro’s disease, then return her to Epsilon Canaris III. Clearly, they had failed in their mission, but through no fault of their own. Kirk’s report to Command had described the conditions that had led to that failure, without falsehood.

Kirk had reported that while en route to the Enterprise, the shuttlecraft carrying himself, Spock, McCoy, and Hedford had encountered an unknown energy field that affected guidance COntrols and resulted in a forced landing on a planetoid in the

Gamma Canaris region. By the time the En[erprise had located the missing shuttle, Nancy Hedford had succumbed to her affliction. In the interim, the energy field had dissipated, so there was no reason to think that any other vessel in the area would ever run afoul of that particular navigational hazard again. It was the truth and nothing but the truth. Just not all of the truth.

Kirk had placed his name on the report without misgivings.

McCoy had signed a death certificate for the commissioner in good conscience, not because her body had died, but because Nancy Hedford no longer existed in the strict sense of the word.

At least, not as she used to exist.

With his duty to Starfleet discharged, Kirk had then turned himself to fulfilling his duty to history in a way that Starfleet officially encouraged.

Starship captains had a way of being on hand when history was made, and some aspects of important events were best left unreported for a time. History might record that a peace treaty was signed on a particular date at a particular place, but for the participants, it was best if some years passed before the starship captain in attendance made public any personal observations about those people involved. Let the moment of glory be celebrated before details about a diplomat’s marital problems, or a general’s predilection for Antarean brandy, became public knowledge.

To insure discretion, but to encourage the preservation of historical facts, Starfleet maintained a system of sealed, personal logs. Officers were free to record their unique, non-duty-related observations and opinions, then deposit those records in the Starfleet Archives on Earth’s moon with a note indicating how long they should remain sealed—a century was usual if only because humans were so long-lived these days.

It was in such a log that James T. Kirk had recorded every detail of his encounter with Zefram Cochrane. For now, the brilliant scientist’s remaining years would be undisturbed, and his fate would remain a mystery, just as he had wished and Kirk had promised. But a century on, when Kirk’s record was released, to the delight of historians the mystery would be solved. Any resulting mission to Cochrane’s planetold would uncover only a siinple shelter cannibalized from an antique ship, an overgrown garden gone to seed, and the skeletons of two people who had lived out their lives together, untroubled and bound by love.

..Acceptable,” Spock had declared six months ago when the captain had laid out his compromise. Even McCoy had said it sounded almost logical, grimacing as he did so.

But as of now, upon hearing what Admiral Kabreigny had related to Kirk, Spock had changed his mind. “I submit that the point of such secrecy is moot,” he said. He sat with folded arms on the other side of the desk from the captain. McCoy sat beside him. his medical kit on the desk beside the viewer. “We agreed to withhold purely personal, nonessential facts from Starfleet Command. based on the assumption that what the Companion did to the Ga/i/eo, and to Commissioner Hedford, would never be repeated. However, with the disappearance of the Cio, of Utopia Planilia under similar circumstances in the same region of space, logic compels us to consider the possibility that the Companion is once again a threat.” “She was never a threat,” Kirk insisted. “What she did was without malice. She loved Cochrane. Cochrane was lonely. So she brought him visitors. The Companion didn’t know about Sakuro’s disease.” “On Vulcan, norsehla[ also have no conception of right or wrong. yet we do not allow them to eat our citizens.” “What’s a norsehlat?” McCoy asked.