the bar there had taken Joseph under their wings—and in the case of one female, a Velossian, those wings were literal. After leaving Bajoran space, Kirk and Joseph had had many discussions concerning the appropriateness of certain words and phrases, and under which circumstances, if any, they could be used.
“Who says I change the rules?” Kirk asked.
The child stuck out his lower lip and held up his empty hands as if expecting something to drop into them. “Every-body?”
Kirk could see there was another topic he’d have to craft some careful discussions around. “I don’t change rules all the time. Some rules shouldn’t be changed at all.”
“Uncle Scotty says you keep trying to get him to change the rules of physics.”
“That’s only because Scotty can change the rules of physics…if you ask him the right way.”
Joseph looked down the length of the bridge at Scott, working at his engineering station. “Wow…” the child said with respect.
Kirk glanced ahead at Scotty, too, grateful for the kindness and forbearance the engineer showed his son, happy that he was shaping up to be a considerable influence on the child. And then he noticed the middle screen on the forward bulkhead flash from its display of the boundary schematic to an extremely dark visual image, again from what appeared to be the bridge of a Romulan ship. The warbirds had arrived.
“The demand is made: Where is Kirk?” a rough voice growled over the bridge speakers. It apparently belonged to the figure who was little more than a dark silhouette on the screen, backlit by a dim cluster of ready lights.
“Which ship is that coming from?” Kirk asked. He needed to know if he was speaking to the commander of all three Romulan vessels, or to another intermediary. “And can we do anything about the image quality?”
“No hailing frequencies,” Beverly Crusher said from her communications console. “They just started transmitting.”
“Tholian courtesy and Klingon manners,” McCoy said. “Reminds me of a Vulcan I know.”
Kirk refused to think Spock, reminded himself he was on, essentially, a diplomatic mission, and replied appropriately. “I’m James Kirk of the private vessel, Calypso. Whom do I have the honor of—”
The commander on-screen didn’t bother to wait for Kirk to finish. “The demand is repeated. Where is Kirk?”
Kirk looked ahead to communications. “Doctor Crusher, are our transmissions getting through?”
“You have ten seconds to comply,” the commander snarled.
“Wonderful,” McCoy said. “On top of everything else, they took diplomacy lessons from the Borg.”
“Put this on all channels, Doctor Crusher,” Kirk said, trying to keep the urgency from his voice. “The demand is met. I am Kirk.” And then, in what he hoped was an appropriate tone, he added, “Who are you?”
“No indication that weapons are powering up,” La Forge said.
“But th’ three of them are still in attack formation,” Scott added.
“Adjust that image, please,” Kirk said. “I’d like to see who’s threatening us.” Then he felt Joseph’s hand tugging his shirt again, and he regretted his word choice. He looked down at his son, mouthed the words It’s okay, then held his finger to his lips to signal silence. Joseph was well trained and immediately pressed his lips together.
Static lines flickered across the small forward screen, and for a moment the background of ready lights seemed to flare up as if they had exploded. But the speaker, if indeed he was the speaker, remained a silhouette.
“That’s the best I can do,” Crusher said. “They’ve stripped the visual information out of their signal. There’s nothing there to enhance.”
“Jean-Luc?” Kirk asked, trying to decide on his next step. “Could this still be part of a test?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Picard said. “But in the final analysis, keep in mind that we can always outrun them.”
The last thing Kirk wanted to do was to close the door on finding justice for Spock. But he also had a responsibility to the people on this ship, and to his son. He made his decision.
“Jean-Luc, full power to shields. Mister Scott, Mister La Forge, prepare for full warp on my order, on a reverse course back into the Neutral Zone.” Then Kirk addressed the screen again. “The demand is repeated. Who are you? You have ten seconds to comply.”
For eight seconds, the only sounds in the bridge of the Calypso were mechanical. Then the speaker answered.
“Our demand is not met. You are not Kirk.”
Kirk didn’t understand, called out to McCoy. “Bones, prepare to transmit my complete medical records, including DNA sequence.”
McCoy began working with the medical tricorder on his belt.
Kirk spoke to the screen again. “I am transmitting my full medical and genetic profile, proving that I am —”
“Not you,” the speaker interrupted angrily. “Your blood. T’Kol T’Lan Kirk. The demand is repeated for the third and final time.”
Kirk felt a sudden disconnect with his surroundings, as if a holodeck had suffered a brief programming hesitation in its recreation of an ancient event. For a moment, he told himself he couldn’t possibly have heard what he thought the speaker had said. But then he saw that everyone else on the bridge had turned to look at Joseph.
As carefully as if he were defusing an antimatter bomb, Kirk took control of the situation. “Scotty,” he said quietly, “I want those engines ready to go instantly.”
The chief engineer nodded once, his expression grim, and turned back to his board.
“Jean-Luc, prepare to coalesce distributed phasers.”
Picard didn’t object, even though the instant the widely dispersed sections of the Calypso’s disguised armaments slipped along the hull rails to assemble themselves into functional phaser cannons, the ship’s usefulness and her mission would be at an end. “Standing by,” he said.
Kirk prepared himself for the split-second decisions he knew he would have to be ready to make. He didn’t risk looking at Joseph beside him. Then as arrogantly as he could, he replied to the speaker.
“By what right do you dare make this demand of my blood?”
There was no delay in the response. “By the right of all Imperial subjects to reclaim their birthright and their heritage.” There was a slight, though distinct, change in the speaker’s inflection, then, as if it had suddenly come to his attention that he was addressing an alien unaware of the topic under discussion. “Your line is honored, James Kirk. Your blood is welcome. As consort to Teilani of the Chalchaj ‘qmey. As sire of T’Kol T’Lan…”
And then the speaker on the viewscreen leaned forward, slipping into a pale band of illumination on his bridge, at last revealing his features and the answer to so many questions.
Tholian courtesy. Klingon manners. Borg diplomacy. All in Romulan space.
The commander of the warbird was a Reman.
“James T. Kirk, we welcome your child as our own….”
10
REMUS, STARDATE 57485.7
Watchful, ever watchful. Those were the words the slaves whispered in the mines, down through the generations, from the time of the Clans, from the legends of the Old Ways. Watchful like the stone. Watchful like their world itself, forever keeping one face turned to the sun, the other turned to the night, never blinking, never shirking, waiting for the time when change at last would come, and the slaves would be free, and the free, enslaved.
So Remus orbited its sun. So the Calypso orbited Remus.
It was one small ship, alien and alone, flanked protectively—or threateningly—by massive warbirds painted
