Текст книги "The Star to Every Wandering "
Автор книги: David George
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FIVE
2255/(2255/2271)
The plasma blast seared the air beside the left ear of Lieutenant James T. Kirk. Though he didn’t see the pulse as it rocketed past him, he did feel its heat, did hear the low, menacing hum it generated. He flinched and dived down to his right, throwing himself to the outpost floor behind a dense tangle of wrecked equipment. On the far side of the room, the plasma shot exploded against the wall, sending up a thunderous report and leaving behind a scorched, smoking scar in whatever type of metal had been utilized to construct the Pelfrey Complex here on Beta Regenis II.
Next to Kirk, Lieutenant Commander Leslie DeGuerrin sat with her back against a broken console that had crashed onto its side. Tall and strongly built, she calmly studied the gauge on her laser pistol. “Almost drained,” she told Kirk. It didn’t surprise him. They’d been engaged in this firefight for more than an hour, and for the last half of that time, they’d abandoned the stun settings-and the correspondingly lower power requirements-of their weapons. When it had become apparent that the landing party faced a force at least three times their number, DeGuerrin had made it clear that the odds of their getting out of the complex alive would increase dramatically if they could permanently eliminate enemy fighters, rather than just rendering them unconscious for a short time; Tholians typically recovered quickly from the stun effect of Starfleet lasers.
Kirk raised his own pistol and examined the power indicator. “Mine’s down to nineteen percent,” he said. “What do we do now?” DeGuerrin had led their four-member team here from the Farragut. While the starship completed a badly needed delivery of medicine and medical personnel to the New Mozambique colony, Captain Garrovick had sent the shuttlecraft Dahlgren to Beta Regenis II. There, in the domed Pelfrey Complex that had been constructed on the inhospitable surface of the class-K planet, Dr. Mowry-the ship’s assistant chief medical officer-would administer the annual physical examinations to the outpost scientists, as required by Starfleet regulations. At the same time, DeGuerrin, Kirk, and Ensign Ketchum would collect research materials and reports that needed to be conveyed to Starfleet.
DeGuerrin looked up from her laser pistol. “I’m not sure what we can do,” she said. “How many of them did you count?”
“There have to be at least fourteen,” Kirk said, basing the figure on what he had seen and heard of the Tholians since the Dahlgren crew had come under attack. Because the nonhumanoid aliens wore environmental suits, it had been particularly difficult to tell one from another, but Kirk felt confident that he’d identified as least that many distinct individuals.
“I thought at least eighteen,” DeGuerrin said, “including the two we killed. That leaves no less than sixteen.” Kirk didn’t dispute DeGuerrin’s assessment, trusting her expertise in security matters. He also understood what she hadn’t said: that, given the circumstances, the quartet of Farragut crewmembers had virtually no chance of defeating a Tholian contingent of that size. “We’re going to have to make a run for the Dahlgren,” DeGuerrin said, clearly choosing retreat over continuing the battle.
But while Kirk would’ve gladly considered escape a victory at this juncture, he also knew two facts that made such a course problematic. To begin with, this facility had been erected for the purpose of allowing a scientific team to investigate both the planet’s atmosphere and its volatile crust; the former inhibited the use of transporters, sensors, deflector shields, and communicators, while the latter contained unusual compounds that might provide useful in power generation and the manufacture of weapons. Kirk didn’t know what the researchers and scientists had learned so far, but he did know that any knowledge they had gleaned needed to be kept out of the hands of the belligerent Tholian Assembly.
He also knew that if the Farragut crewmembers attempted to reach the Dahlgren in the complex’s hangar, they would find a group of Tholians waiting for them. He said as much to DeGuerrin. “Even if we managed to get to the shuttlecraft and were able to launch,” he added, “they must have a ship somewhere nearby.” Since the Tholians could not have beamed through the atmosphere, they must have landed at the complex at some point, but when Kirk had set the Dahlgren down in the hangar-he’d piloted the shuttle here from the Farragut-he had seen no craft there other than the scientists’ two workpods.
In fact, the first indication of there being something wrong at the facility had come when DeGuerrin’s team entered and found it silent. Within the small pressure dome, the Pelfrey Complex consisted of a series of concentric, interlocking rings. The hangar and life support machinery occupied the perimeter and encircled a loop of hydroponically grown crops. Next came living quarters and common areas for the dozen scientists and support personnel stationed on Beta Regenis II. At the center of the complex, a series of laboratories had been set up. It had been there, in one of the labs, that the Farragut crew had found the twelve bodies. DeGuerrin had ordered the team back to the shuttlecraft at once, but too late; the Tholians had already cut off their escape.
“Our only other choice is to try to find a way of destroying the complex,” DeGuerrin said. Suddenly, two more plasma weapons fired, one pulse striking the far wall and the other slamming into the heap of ruined equipment behind which Kirk and DeGuerrin had taken cover. He automatically recoiled, but the security officer only reacted by climbing to her knees and firing her laser pistol from behind the pile of equipment.
When she finished, Kirk said, “This place is encased in a pressure dome. It shouldn’t take too much effort to make it fail.”
“No,” DeGuerrin agreed, but then she shook her head. “The Tholians are wearing environmental suits, though. They could potentially survive a catastrophic failure of the dome.”
“They could,” Kirk said. “The scientists here also kept their own environmental suits back in the hangar, but we could never reach them.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking about saving us or killing the Tholians, though. I was only thinking about protecting the research that’s been done here. Even if the data or the samples or whatever work has been accomplished isn’t wiped out, the collapse of the dome atop the complex would make retrieving any of it more than a simple operation.”
“That would give Captain Garrovick enough time to realize that we’re overdue and bring the Farragut here,” DeGuerrin said.
“And stop the Tholians,” Kirk concluded.
DeGuerrin peered around the lab. “Do you think they would have put dome monitors and controls in here?” she asked.
“My guess is that if they did, the panels are through there,” Kirk said, pointing to a pair of closed doors to their left, perhaps ten strides away. “That’s the hub of the complex. Besides having controls out by the life support equipment, I think the support personnel would want to be able to check and operate those systems from a secondary, centrally located area.”
“Makes sense,” DeGuerrin said. Kirk also knew that it didn’t much matter whether it did or not. The Tholians had allowed the four of them to reach the heart of the complex before closing ranks around them. Completely contained now, the Farragut crewmembers could realistically only attempt to hold their ground or move farther inward.
DeGuerrin looked directly ahead, and Kirk followed her gaze to an open doorway. The two had left Dr. Mowry and Ensign Ketchum in the adjoining lab, giving them a respite while Kirk and DeGuerrin had returned here to reengage the Tholians. “Can you get back to them?” asked the lieutenant commander. “Tell them what I’m going to attempt?”
Kirk nodded. He did not relish the idea of informing two of his crewmates that they would shortly die, but he understood that he had to tell them. About to make the sacrifice they knew might be required of them when they had joined Starfleet, they deserved to be treated with honesty and respect. “I’ll make it,” Kirk said. “I’ll tell them.”
“All right,” DeGuerrin said. She rose up onto her haunches, obviously preparing to break for the inner labs to their left. “Cover me,” she said. “And wish me luck.”
“Luck,” Kirk said as he set himself at the edge of the smashed equipment behind which he and DeGuerrin hid. He raised his laser pistol and asked, “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Then here I go,” Kirk said. Low to the floor, he looked out toward the positions from which the Tholians had been firing-two open entryways into the room-and saw the shimmer of their green environmental suits from just beyond. He opened fire. He saw one of the Tholians duck away, but another returned a spate of plasma bolts in Kirk’s direction. The heap of wrecked equipment shook as the shots rocked it.
Kirk continued to fire, but glanced over toward DeGuerrin. He saw her sprinting across the room toward the doors, which opened at her approach, but then a plasma bolt slammed into her shoulder. Kirk heard her cry out briefly. Her momentum carried her forward as her body spun around from the force of the shot. DeGuerrin made it into the next room, but just past the threshold, she collapsed. The doors slid shut behind her.
Kirk stopped firing and took cover once more. He looked to his left again and saw two more blasts from the Tholian weapons, these hammering into the doors. He didn’t know what he should do. Lieutenant Commander DeGuerrin had been hit, he’d seen that, he’d seen her go down, but if she’d only been wounded, she still might be able to carry out the actions she’d intended.
But she might not be, Kirk told himself, and the thought made his decision easy. He quickly made his way to the other side of the shattered equipment, then prepared to follow DeGuerrin. As he did so, he spotted her laser pistol lying on the floor two-thirds of the way to the doors. She must’ve dropped it when she’d been hit. Kirk thought that the lost weapon might just allow him to safely navigate his way to the hub of the lab complex.
Reaching out quickly, Kirk fired blindly toward the Tholians, then raced out from his cover and toward the doors. After three steps, he stopped abruptly, waited for an instant, then resumed running again. He heard, felt, and saw plasma bolts all about him. Five strides along, Kirk lunged forward, bringing his right shoulder down toward the floor. He saw DeGuerrin’s laser at close range as he flew over it, but he did not reach for it. As his shoulder struck the floor and he rolled, he saw a blast of plasma surge into the weapon and send it flying.
Amid the salvo of the Tholian weapons, a small squeak reached Kirk’s ears: the doors to the inner labs opening. He soared past the jamb and came to rest on his back. As the doors glided closed behind him, he quickly pushed himself up. Beside him lay Lieutenant Commander DeGuerrin, her eyes closed, smoke rising from a charred wound in her shoulder, the stench of her seared flesh sickeningly strong. Kirk reached two fingers to her neck, searching for a pulse. He found one, weak but present.
Knowing that he didn’t have long, that the Tholians would close in soon enough, Kirk rose, touched a control beside the doors to lock them, then examined his new environs. He stood in a large room shaped like one quarter of a circle, having entered it through the outer, arcing wall. Consoles lined the periphery of the room, and several large machines he did not recognize filled the interior of the space. Dashing from one panel to the next, he searched for anything that resembled environmental controls for the dome.
He found nothing.
Weapons fire pounded into the doors, and Kirk looked back in that direction, over at DeGuerrin. If the Tholians penetrated this lab, he knew that they would immediately kill her, and so he felt the temptation to return to her and move her to a safer place. The thought made no sense, though, for if Kirk succeeded in bringing down the pressure dome, they would all die anyway. Saving Lieutenant Commander DeGuerrin now would be a foolish waste of time.
Another pulse struck the door, the percussive sound pushing Kirk back into motion. He rushed across the room and through a single door, this in one of the two straight walls. He found himself in a lab shaped identically to the last one, but oriented and equipped differently. Various stations lined the walls, but two very large machines sat in the middle of the room, their purposes a mystery to Kirk. Bordering one of them, a low platform contained an enormous slab of metallic rock, at least five meters long, five meters wide, and two deep. It had obviously been carved out of the planet’s surface and brought here for study.
As he had in the previous lab, Kirk locked the doors, then hied from panel to panel, hunting for the controls of the pressure dome. He’d only checked two consoles, though, before he stopped and turned back to regard the mass of native stone. Then he peered at all three entrances into the room, a single door in each of the two straight walls and a set of double doors in the curved wall. The great rock would have fit through none of them, he realized; it must have been beamed here.
Kirk returned his attention to the panels, but now he began looking for transporter controls. He knew that the planet’s atmosphere inhibited transport through it, but within the Pelfrey Complex itself, within the pressure dome, it must have been possible. The scientists must have employed a workpod to drag the mammoth stone into the hangar, and then from there beamed it into the lab.
At the fifth console he came to, Kirk saw a symbol composed of two outward-pointing arrows on either side of a square. A series of dots formed the bottom half of the square, as though the shape was dematerializing. Kirk scrutinized the controls and saw that they did indeed conform to those of a transporter.
Activating it, he found the targeting sensors and scanned for human life signs. Four sets of coordinates appeared on the display, confirming that sensors, useless within the planet’s atmosphere, still functioned within the pressure dome. As quickly as he could, Kirk beamed the colossal stone from atop the platform and onto the floor of the lab. Once he’d done so, he locked onto the other three Farragut crewmembers and transported them here.
Once they’d materialized, Kirk went to the platform and, without explaining the situation, pointed out DeGuerrin’s wound to Dr. Mowry. Together, Kirk and Ketchum lifted the security officer and lowered her to the floor, where the doctor took the medkit hanging at his side and began examining her. Kirk then returned to the transporter controls and scanned for all life signs. He saw only the four in this room and understood that the sensors clearly hadn’t been calibrated for Tholians. “Doctor,” he called back over his shoulder, “this transporter doesn’t recognize Tholian life-forms. I need to know distinguishing characteristics I can scan for.” Mowry didn’t respond right away, no doubt continuing to minister to DeGuerrin. “Doctor,” Kirk said, “I need to know now or we’re all going to die.”
“They have two arms and six legs,” Mowry said. “They have an exoskeleton. They– “
“I need something I can scan for easily,” Kirk said.
Mowry did not respond for a moment, but then said, “They have body temperatures of over two hundred degrees.”
“Now that I can scan for,” Kirk said, more to himself than to the doctor. He did so, and found not the sixteen Tholians that DeGuerrin had estimated, but twenty-one. He started to adjust the sensors to target their plasma pistols, intending to transport the weapons here, but then something else occurred to him: even unarmed, twenty-one Tholians might be able to overwhelm just four Starfleet personnel. “Doctor Mowry,” he asked, “can Tholians survive in normal human temperature ranges? At say twenty or twenty-five?” It couldn’t be any warmer than that within the complex.
“No,” Mowry said. “At one hundred, a Tholian’s exoskeleton will begin to crack.”
Kirk operated the targeting sensors again, fine-tuning his goals. He hesitated to take the action he’d planned, though, reluctant to cause such loss of life. The Tholians invaded this complex, Kirk reminded himself. They killed the twelve personnel stationed here, and they’re trying to kill us too.
As though providing corroboration of his thoughts, weapons fire suddenly battered the door through which Kirk had entered the lab. He reached forward and triggered the transporter. Kirk heard the familiar whine of the materialization sequence, and he turned to see the green environmental suits of the Tholians appear on the platform, along with any other equipment they’d been holding, including their plasma weapons. The suits hung in the air as they formed, holding the shapes of their wearers, then with the other equipment fell in a clatter to the platform.
From the neighboring lab rose a horrible shriek and a series of frantic chirps and clicks. Kirk didn’t need to understand the language of the Tholians to differentiate their cries of pain. He took no pleasure in what he’d done, but he accepted the necessity of it.
Peering back at the transporter console, Kirk checked the readings of the twenty-one Tholians. Some of them continued to move, mostly in haphazard fashion, but not for long. Within a minute, all motion had ceased.
Kirk walked back over to where Mowry treated DeGuerrin. Standing beside Ketchum, he asked the doctor, “Is she going to be all right?”
“Yes,” Mowry said, looking up at Kirk. “And I guess we will be too.”
“We’ve got a fighting chance, anyway,” Kirk said. “But I still need to take the Dahlgren into space and get a message to the Farragut about what’s going on here. There’s got to be a Tholian ship around, so I’m going to have to elude it, but I’m confident that I can. The planet’s atmosphere will provide good cover for me.”
“We’re not all going?” Ketchum said.
“I think you’ll be safer here,” Kirk told him. “There’s only one way into the complex, and that’s through the hangar. If any more Tholians try to enter, you’ll be able to defend yourselves the way I just did. Let me show you.”
Kirk escorted Ketchum back over to the transporter console, where he demonstrated for the ensign how he had scanned for the Tholians and beamed away their environmental suits and weapons. Kirk then returned to the platform and pulled the Tholian equipment from it and onto the floor, selecting one of their plasma pistols to go along with his own, nearly depleted laser. Then he stepped up onto the platform and told Ketchum to transport him to the hangar. “If I’m not back in– ” He calculated the amount of time it should take him to get into orbit, send a message to the Farragut, and return to the complex, then added in a buffer for any evasive maneuvers he might have to take if he encountered a Tholian vessel. “If I’m not back in three hours, you’ll have to take one of the workpods into orbit and attempt to reach the Farragut,” he told Ketchum.
“Yes, sir,” the ensign said.
“Energize,” Kirk ordered. As he dematerialized, the lab faded from view, and then a subjectively indeterminate amount of time later, the hangar appeared in its place, the shuttlecraft directly in front of him. Kirk hurried to board the Dahlgren, and only as the hatch hummed closed after him did he see through a viewport the half-dozen Tholians scattered about the hangar. The dark red, multilegged beings, about the same general proportions as a humanoid, had crumpled to the floor, their carapaces ruptured, a bright ichor pooling about them. Despite their being adversaries, Kirk wished that their attack on the research station had not made his actions necessary.
Knowing that he had a duty to perform, Kirk allowed himself only a moment for such thoughts, then put them out of his mind. He took a seat at the shuttlecraft’s forward console, quickly bringing the Dahlgren up to power. As he engaged the antigravs to lift the shuttle and take it out of the hangar, he hoped that he would not be detected by the Tholian vessel-or vessels-when he cleared the atmosphere, or if he did, that it would turn out to be a single transport or scout ship with minimal armaments. The Dahlgren, he knew, had no weaponry of any kind.
With no other choice, Kirk pointed the bow of the shuttlecraft upward and began the ascent to orbit.
Not knowing to what place or time he should go, Kirk had instead concentrated on an identity, then turned in place on the metallic plain of the Otevrel’s artificial world. As he’d hoped, the nexus had changed about him, taking him where he needed to go. Now, he stood in the cramped body of an old Starfleet shuttle, peering ahead to where another version of himself piloted the craft-the same version he’d seen meeting Antonia for the first time, escaping with Merrick from planet 892-IV, and leading a landing party down to Gamma Trianguli VI.
Kirk took a step forward and opened his mouth, but then didn’t know how to address this other Kirk. He peered through the bow viewport for a moment, where he saw a thick planetary atmosphere giving way to stars above. Finally, he simply said, “Jim.”
The other Kirk-Jim– spun around in his seat, drawing an outmoded laser pistol from his side. “Who– ” he started, but then stopped, obviously shocked to see Kirk standing there. He stood up then, slowly, still brandishing his weapon. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am,” Kirk said. As best he could tell, at one point in time, they had been the same person, deciding to abandon the chimera of the nexus in order to help Picard prevent the deaths of the inhabitants of Veridian IV. And Kirk had left, but according to Guinan-and as Kirk also somehow perceived-this echo of himself had been left behind, no less real, but now with a life that had diverged from his own path.
“You can’t be me,” Jim said, though in a less-than-authoritative way that suggested he sought to convince himself of his assertion.
“Not anymore I’m not,” Kirk agreed, “but until a short time ago, yes, we were the same person.” He recalled how Picard had phrased the situation, and he repeated it now. “We are both caught up in some type of temporal nexus.” Kirk considered how best to convince his alter ego of their circumstances, but then he saw awareness dawn on Jim’s face.
“Picard,” he said as he lowered his laser.
“Yes,” Kirk said. “I left the nexus with him. We stopped Soran, but then– ” The shuttlecraft jolted hard, as though struck by something. Kirk staggered to his right and almost went down, but righted himself against the bulkhead. When he looked back toward the bow, he saw through the viewport a small vessel that seemed as though it had been constructed out of a collection of triangular hull components. He recognized its origin immediately-Tholian– and knew the time period to which he had come. For his actions down on Beta Regenis II and out here in space, Starfleet had awarded him the Grankite Order of Tactics.
“Hold on,” Jim yelled, now back at the forward console. Kirk grabbed onto the handle of an equipment door as the shuttle veered to port, the inertial dampers taking a fraction of a second to compensate for the rapid movement. Through the viewport, Kirk saw a bolt of plasma energy streak past.
As Jim operated the helm controls, Kirk made his way forward until he dropped into the chair beside him. “Jim,” he said, “stop this. I need to talk with you.”
“You don’t understand,” Jim said, not looking away from where his hands darted across the panel. “I have to– “
“You have to evade the Tholians while you transmit a message to Captain Garrovick aboard the Farragut,” Kirk said. “Down at the research complex, all of the scientists are dead, killed in an unprovoked attack by the Tholians.”
Jim looked up at him but said nothing. Then another Tholian weapon landed, shaking the cabin violently, and he began working the controls again. Kirk remembered that this hadn’t happened before, that while he’d been spotted by the Tholian vessel in orbit, he’d managed to evade it after taking only a single blast of its weapons fire. But then, when he’d piloted the shuttlecraft all those years ago, he hadn’t been distracted by an unexpected passenger. “If you know where we are and what’s going on,” Jim said, “then you know I have to do this.”
“No, you don’t,” Kirk said, but Jim continued taking the shuttle through evasive maneuvers. Kirk reached over and took hold of his counterpart by his upper arms, turning Jim to face him. “You don’t have to do this,” Kirk insisted. “This isn’t even really happening.”
Another plasma bolt struck the shuttlecraft. The forward control console exploded, bathing the two men in a shower of sparks. Smoke filled the cabin, and then Kirk heard the low moan of overstressed metal. He saw a thin crack zigzag up the bulkhead, and then the shuttle fractured, bursting apart around them. For a moment, they floated in the frightening totality of space, the insensate stars peering coldly down on them, the planet hanging off to one side, the Tholian vessel looming above them.
Kirk had not let go his grip on Jim’s arms, and now he called to mind another location, a safe place where he’d been alone. With the stars still surrounding them, Kirk felt something beneath his feet. He peered downward as he felt the pull of gravity, and he saw grass below him. Looking up, he saw that he and Jim now stood amid trees and other modest growth, in what looked to be a wide parkland. An airpod sat nearby, its gull-wing hatch propped open.
Before him, Jim turned in a circle, inspecting their new locale. Three-quarters of the way around, he stopped and raised an arm, pointing. “That’s Mojave,” he said. Kirk looked that way and saw the towers and spires of the California metropolis, saw the stylized four-posted arch that rose majestically from the lake at the city’s eastern end. “I was only here once.”
“After reading a biography of Christopher Pike,” Kirk said.
“Yes,” Jim agreed. “When I was chief of Starfleet Operations.” He continued looking toward the city. “Captain Pike was born and raised there,” he said. “He used to ride horses out here when he was a boy. They’ve got a memorial to him at the city center.”
Kirk stepped forward, interposing himself between Jim and the city. “Except that’s not really Mojave,” he said, “and we’re not really on Earth. We’re in some type of– “
“Temporal nexus,” Jim said along with him. “Yes, I heard you.” He turned and paced away, but then peered back at Kirk. “I remember Picard,” he said. “I remember deciding to leave the nexus and help him, but then…then I didn’t. I stayed, got caught up again in the events of my own life…” The realization appeared to agitate him.
“It’s all right,” Kirk said. “But now I need your help.”
“You need my help?” Jim said. “Here in the nexus?”
“No. Back in the real universe where we lived our life,” Kirk said. “When I left here with Picard, we were successful in stopping Soran, but then something else happened.”
“Something else?” Jim said.
“Something that I-that we-essentially caused,” Kirk said. “A phenomenon known as a converging temporal loop.” He explained what he had witnessed on Veridian Three, as well as the concept of the loop as described by Data. “It’s destroyed a sizable volume of the space-time continuum and taken many lives, perhaps millions, perhaps even many more than that.”
Jim padded back across the grass until he stood directly in front of Kirk. It should’ve seemed like gazing into a mirror, Kirk thought, but it didn’t. The image he always saw when he peered at his reflection showed him the reverse of his features, which didn’t happen here as he looked at this echo of himself. “And you think what?” Jim asked. “That we can go back in time, somehow stop it from occurring.”
“Not we,” Kirk told him. “You.” And then he explained his plan.
