Worlds in Collision (34 page)

Komack nodded at Chapel and Wolfe, indicating they should step away. Then he leaned down to speak softly to Kirk.

“Federation security knew an assassination would be attempted at the prize ceremonies. They just didn't know who or why. When they came to us for help, we offered them our best.” Komack smiled at Kirk. “That's you, Jim.”

Kirk was furious. “How could you send my ship and my people into a situation like that without giving us all your information? Without telling us?”

“First,” Komack said sharply, still keeping his voice down, “we didn't have any more information. The Andorian agent who brought us what we did know had been working for a mysterious Klingon trader. She thought he was arranging something like this, and even managed to be present at a planning meeting. But something must have gone wrong and she had her memories disrupted. We couldn't get anything more from her.”

Kirk tried to stay angry but Komack's story sounded true.

“Second,” the admiral continued, “as far as we were concerned, we
were
telling you what you were getting involved with. Tr'Nele had a miniature device hidden in his equipment on the
Enterprise,
designed by the Pathfinders who hired him, no doubt, that corrupted all of our communications. After you left Starbase Four, Command transmitted all the information you might have needed and we even have your coded replies acknowledging receipt.”

“But I never received anything, never responded.”

“Tr'Nele's device worked just like the installation we found hidden on Prime. Jams subspace and can create false messages. I've seen a tape of
me
telling Wolfe to keep following her orders. I never sent it. Never sent any of the messages that led Wolfe to go after Spock with phasers set to kill or Farl to go after the Vulcans who worked here. We were all manipulated by false information.”

Kirk looked at Komack from the corners of his eyes. Was there really an escape path here?

“So Spock escaping, Scott, Uhura, McCoy, and me following…?”

Komack stood up. “The record will show you were just following the orders I sent authorizing you to take any action you saw fit to prevent the planned assassination of a being or beings unknown on Memory Prime. The fact that you didn't receive those orders is irrelevant.”

“No charges?”

“No charges,” Komack confirmed. He looked down the ward and waved at someone. “It's all right,” he said. “We're finished.”

Scott and Romaine walked over to the captain's bed. They were holding hands.

Kirk was honestly surprised to see his engineer. “Scotty, the
Enterprise
is at spacedock and you're not with her?”

Scott shook his head and looked at Romaine with a passion that Kirk had never seen in the engineer, but instantly recognized. “Not this time, Captain.”

Romaine returned Scott's look and Kirk saw the passion in her, too.

“At least this time, we'll know what we're doing,” she said. “No false hopes. No false promises.” She squeezed Scott's hand and smiled at the captain. “I don't think I'll be leaving Prime for a long time, Captain. They need me here. I'm the only one who can talk with Twelve, try to help it. I don't have to interface. I can just
do
it.”

“And the others?” Kirk smiled back at the woman. She looked different now. That glow he had seen in her eyes, just at the moment when she had decided to take action in the lab, was back. Perhaps it had never left.

“The others need me, too,” she said. “Part of the problem is they can't get information in fast enough. They reconfigured themselves without letting us know, increased their capacity by a factor of ten, created a network of robots to gather even more data for them, and it's only now that they've realized that our world, their Datawell, is actually
real.
They can't just take from it anymore, they have to learn to move among it, be part of it. And to do that, they need help, someone to show them the way between both worlds.”

“You?” the Captain asked.

Romaine smiled again and nodded.

“They've even given me a new name,” she said, slipping her arm around Scott and holding him close. “They call me their Pathfinder.”

 

“Oh, steward!”

Kirk turned in time to see McCoy elbowing his way through the partygoers to catch up with him. The captain ducked his head and eased his way past a Gorn in heated conversation with Professor La'kara, who still clutched his newly won prize scroll under his arm. Happy that the Centauran hadn't noticed him, Kirk reached a relatively uncrowded area by a table serving coffee, tea, and phil. He had barely avoided spilling his drink on his dress tunic.

“How's the knee, Jim?” McCoy grinned expansively. The prize ceremonies were over and the winners' ball was the largest and best party that either of them could remember.

Kirk flexed his right knee, putting some extra weight on it. “Feels perfect.”

McCoy raised his glass of bourbon—real bourbon brought in by a delegation from North America to celebrate the prize won in biogeology by two members of the faculty at the University of Kentucky.

“You know, Jim, in the old days, tearing up your ligaments like that could have laid you up for two, maybe even three weeks while the new ones grew back. But that transporter-based transplant technique of Stlur and T'Vann?” McCoy shook his head at the marvel of it. “What was it? Four days and no incision?”

“I wish I could say the same thing.”

Kirk turned to see Sal Nensi coming to join them. A week after tr'Nele had fractured almost all Nensi's ribs, the chief administrator still moved carefully.

McCoy patted Nensi gently on his back. “There's a lot to be said about the old-fashioned methods, too, Sal. Protoplasers and monotransplants may not be flashy and new, but they still do the job.”

“Are Scott and Mira here?” Kirk asked.

“No one's seen them for a week, at least.” Nensi laughed. “But supply records show that they
are
having meals sent to her apartment, so I don't think we have to send out any search parties yet.”

“There's Spock,” McCoy said, pointing into the crowd.

Kirk held up his hand to wave and Spock acknowledged him with a nod. When he joined them, he was accompanied by another Vulcan, shorter, much older, and evidently recovered from his ordeal in tr'Nele's stasis field.

Kirk, McCoy, and Nensi each greeted the real Academician Sradek with a salute and congratulations for his Peace Prize.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” the academician responded, and raised his glass to take a sip from it.

McCoy sniffed the air and wrinkled his brow. “Excuse me, Academician, but is that…bourbon?”

“From Kentucky,” Sradek confirmed. He regarded the glass and took another sip.

Kirk and McCoy exchanged a quick glance of surprise. Perhaps Vulcans mellowed by the time they reached their two-hundredth birthday.

“One does not win the Nobel and Z. Magnees Peace Prize every day,” Spock said as if offering an excuse for Sradek's choice of drink.

“Of course not, Spock,” Sradek said. “It is only awarded every four standard years.”

McCoy leaned forward and smiled at the academician. “Tell me, sir, did you find it gratifying to have a reunion with your former student here?”

“Perhaps not in the way that you might use the word, Doctor. But I did look forward to meeting again with Spock, as I looked forward to his presence in my classes each semester.”

“You looked forward to having Spock in your classes?” the doctor asked, without trying to hide his surprise.

“Certainly,” Sradek answered. “Classes at the Academy tend to have a certain aura of tradition and solemnity to them. I found that Spock could always be counted upon to dispel some of that aura. In quite novel ways, too, I might add.”

McCoy rocked back on his feet, eyes wide in calculated innocence. “Where I come from,” he said pleasantly, “we call students like that ‘class clowns.' Would that be an accurate assessment of Spock? As a student, of course.”

Sradek stared away for a moment, obviously considering an appropriate example. Spock leaned forward.

“Doctor, I do not think it is useful to take up the academician's time in talks of a frivolous nature. There is no logic in having him recount stories of my activities as a student when there are so many other beings here with whom he could have a productive conversation.”

“But, Academician,” McCoy protested, “I'm only trying to learn as much as I can about Mr. Spock because we must often work together, and as I'm sure both you and he will agree, the more information one has about a subject, the less chance there can be for misunderstandings.”

Sradek nodded. “And therefore your work will be more efficient and productive. Well put, Doctor. Quite right. I shall tell you of some of Spock's exploits in my classes.” Sradek took another sip of bourbon and raised an eyebrow as he glanced at Spock. “You must find it quite invigorating, Spock, to work with a human who has such a firm grasp of logic.”

McCoy's expanding grin instantly threatened to become insufferable and, a moment later, Spock's expression hardened into stone. But Kirk hadn't missed the almost imperceptible reaction that had crossed Spock's face the instant before, and when the captain smiled, it was for them both.

 

 

 

 

space is infinite

without ending

all within it

just beginning

 

V
ULCAN
C
HILD'S
K
OAN

traditional

Le Rêve d'Étoiles

Extract from
A Historical Analysis of the Five-Year Missions

Admiral Glynis Kestell Tabor, Stellar Institute Press, Paris, Earth

 

According to the records as they existed at that time, of the original twelve
Constitution
-class starships that had embarked on Starfleet's visionary program of five-year missions, five had already been lost in the service of the United Federation of Planets: the
U.S.S. Constellation
as the last casualty of an ancient war, the
Intrepid
in the Gamma 7A system, the
Excalibur
in war-game maneuvers, the
Defiant
in the Tholian Annex, and the
Enterprise
during the incident at Talin IV.

No one denied that these losses had been heavy, in lives and material, but among the dozens of planning commissions that set the Federation's long-term goals and policies, there was no serious doubt that the five-year missions would continue with new ships and new crews. Because, despite the high cost of such epic exploration and expansion, the returns these activities brought to the Federation were always greater.

In a period of only four standard years, the records showed that thousands of strange new worlds had been explored, hundreds of new civilizations had been discovered, and the Federation's boundaries had grown to encompass a volume of space nearly five times that which had been charted as of Stardate 00.1. Given these results, ways could always be found to commission new starships, and as for the new crews those ships would require, they were the secret of the Federation's unprecedented strength.

It was the same secret shared by all great political movements in the histories of a thousand worlds. The Federation was founded not by force, nor by expediency, nor in response to an outside threat. It was founded on a dream—a dream of greater goals and greater good, of common purpose and cooperation, but beyond all else, it was a dream to know more, a dream to explore to the farthest limits and then go beyond.

They called it
le rêve d'étoiles
—the dream of stars.

Like all profound ideas, this dream of stars was irresistible, and the Federation's planners were aware of its attraction. They recognized its presence in the more than twelve thousand applications Starfleet received for each Academy opening. They felt its pull within themselves.

But dreams alone were not enough to sustain the Federation's goals, and fortunately the planners also understood what else was needed and how to obtain it. They understood that throughout the worlds of the Federation there were beings in whom the dream burned brightest. Invariably, all of these individuals had known instantly where their destinies lay from the moment they had first looked up to the lights of the night sky. In every language in all the worlds, the words were always the same: the dream of stars. Not traveling to them, not stopping at them, but moving among them, ever outward, always farther, no end to space or to their quest. Or to the dream.

At Starfleet Academy, the planners were careful to set in place the challenges and the system that would guide the best of those called by the dream to the only position that they could hold, the position to which each had been born.

Starship captain.

There could be no greater embodiment of the dream, and it was upon this foundation that the Federation was ultimately based and its future assured.

The system was not perfect. At the time of the Talin IV tragedy, the planners knew that for every Robert April or Christopher Pike the Academy produced, there would be a Ron Tracey or a James T. Kirk. But that was to be expected when dealing with exceptional beings whose very nature put them at odds with most definitions of what was deemed predictable or normal behavior. On the whole, the planners felt the system worked, and reason and logic—much to the Vulcans' chagrin—had nothing to do with it.

So the Federation's planners set their course for the future, building new ships, setting new missions, knowing that there would be no end to those who would volunteer to take part, because the dream of stars, once acknowledged, could never be denied.

But at that time, in the aftermath of Talin IV, what the planners did not yet know was that once that dream had been experienced, neither could it ever be willingly surrendered.

In accordance with the Federation's goals for the gathering of knowledge, it was a lesson the planners were eventually due to learn, and their system had already created the man who would teach it to them.

Once and for all.