McCoy’s confusion grew. “What reason?”
“I don’t know. It’s what we were…’discussing’ in the cabin when you and Joseph arrived.”
“Before the attack and our ‘rescue.’ “
“Before all that,” Kirk agreed.
“Well, I’m sure it’ll be fascinating to learn what everyone’s really been up to—later—but for right now, what are you and I supposed to do?” McCoy asked.
Kirk turned the metal card over and over in his hand, thinking through his options. “If there is a war under way, you and I are involved. And that means we have to choose a side.”
“Whatever happened to neutrality?”
“If there is a war, then one side has my son, and the other side wants him. I have to choose a side, Bones. It might be the only chance I have to see Joseph again, to take him home.”
Another time, Kirk knew, McCoy might have pointed out that he didn’t have a home. But the sentiment was understandable, and McCoy didn’t challenge it. He did, though, add an important note of caution, even as he made clear his continued support.
“Let’s just hope the side we choose is the same one Picard and La Forge are on.”
“Let’s just hope,” Kirk repeated, as he stared down at the body of the fallen Reman doctor.
Because anyone standing between James T. Kirk and his child would be on the wrong side.
14
PROCESSING SEGMENT 3, STARDATE 57486.7
“We have to find Jim and McCoy,” Picard said.
La Forge nodded his agreement, but like Picard, kept close watch on the Reman doctor on the other side of the darkened infirmary. The two men stood beside an oversized examination table that was fitted with a pallet of autonomous medical devices. “Do you think we’re too late?” the engineer asked.
Picard held his hand over his mouth, as if covering a cough. “To stop the civil war?”
“If that’s what’s really going on,” La Forge said. For a moment, his eyes turned to Picard.
Picard returned his gaze without discomfort. The fact that the engineer’s eyes were artificial implants no longer registered with him. He had enjoyed friendship with a wholly artificial being in Data. He was presently taking direction, if not orders, from a holographic entity. More than any other person, Picard knew that the shell of an intelligent being had no bearing on what was truly important: the spirit that animated that shell.
“I’ve been wondering that myself,” Picard said, before he, like La Forge, returned his attention to the Reman.
“The third party,” La Forge said, and Picard knew the words La Forge wouldn’t say to identify that group. Words too dangerous to speak aloud in this system.
“Deliberately provoking a civil war,” Picard added. To him, that was the questionable theory that had driven this mission, but that now fit the facts. If custody of Joseph had truly been the sole reason for the attack on the Calypso, then why was the ship’s crew allowed to live? The intruders could just as easily have set their disruptors to kill. Surely, if the Calypso and all hands aboard had simply disappeared, the resulting situation would have been far more stable. As it was, with survivors to raise the alarm and push for an investigation, and with a father like Jim Kirk who could be counted upon to attempt to rescue his son without regard for consequences, it seemed the people responsible for this outrage could not have done more if they had wished to create further tension.
But with the Romulan Empire already on the path to war, why undertake a side mission to attack the crew of the Calypso? Picard still could not fathom the strategy involved, nor the purpose behind it.
“Can you see what he’s doing over there?” he asked La Forge.
The engineer blinked.
Picard waited patiently for his response. Blinking meant La Forge was shifting the frequency sensitivity of his implants, perhaps to look into the infrared.
“I’d say he’s preparing spray hypos.”
“Not an encouraging development, I’d say.”
La Forge folded his arms. “We could take him.”
“We might have to,” Picard agreed. “But what then? Beverly and Mister Scott are in whatever passes for surgery around here. And Jim and McCoy are in the burn unit.”
“Captain, this might not be the most welcome suggestion, but we are outnumbered down here. I think the best course of action might be to get back to the Calypso and call for the Titan.”
Picard was uncomfortable even considering that possibility, but knew he must. “It means leaving our friends behind.”
“The way they’ve been treating us so far, I don’t think they’d be in danger.”
Picard couldn’t argue that point. It was exactly what he had said to McCoy about why they shouldn’t fear the worst for Joseph. The boy had been beamed away by people determined to save the child from kidnapping. It did not stand to reason that Joseph’s rescuers would then wish to cause him harm.
“And with the Titan’s sensors,” La Forge went on, “we could find Kirk and McCoy, and Doctor Crusher and Scotty in…under a minute. Beam them aboard, and be gone.”
“What about Joseph?”
“Do you really think he’s still here?”
Picard had gone back and forth on that one, and in the end had decided the most likely outcome was that Kirk’s son was on Remus. He shared his reasoning now with La Forge.
“Whoever boarded the Calypso, they were too small to be Remans. Which means they were likely Romulans. Which makes it almost a certainty that Joseph was beamed out by Remans.”
“With a Starfleet transporter,” La Forge said skeptically, “through full shields.”
“When we resolve this situation and we’re safely back home, I look forward to your engineering report,” Picard said crisply. And that was all the time he wished to devote to thinking about the physical impossibility of what had happened to the child.
“Here he comes,” La Forge warned.
The Reman doctor, whose name was the same as his function, approached with a green metal tray, made of the same oxidized-copper-color substance as the cane he had given to McCoy. Picard could just make out the small cylinders of two spray hypos resting on it.
“I have prepared a medicinal compound for you,” Doctor said. His voice was an improbable cross between a Klingon growl and an Andorian hiss. Quite impossible to analyze for signs of threat or lies, or so it seemed to Picard.
“It will help your liver metabolize the waste products created by your bodies’ stress response to the disruptor blasts.”
“Thank you,” Picard said, trusting the nuances of his voice were equally impenetrable to the Reman. “You are showing us a great kindness.”
Doctor hesitated, giving Picard a measured look. Picard returned it, wondering if Federation Standard did not easily translate into the Reman language.
La Forge’s intervention began as he stepped up to one side of the Reman, who towered over him by a head. “Should I roll up my sleeve?” the engineer asked, even as he began to tug up on the arm of his jacket.
“Here, let me hold that while you give us the shots,” Picard said, reaching for the tray as he approached Doctor from the other side.
The Reman was momentarily flustered by their double approach. “No, it is not necessary to remove clothing,” he said to La Forge. “Not necessary,” he said to Picard, withdrawing the tray, stepping back.
But the Reman’s withdrawal came too late. La Forge swung his already raised fist into Doctor’s face just as, from the other side, Picard used both his hands to swing the tray up and smash it into Doctor’s head.
With a shrill hissing shriek, the Reman stumbled back, and La Forge and Picard pressed their advantage, wrestling him to ground.
