uniform. “Captain Riker.” Kirk shook Will Riker’s hand. “Jean-Luc told me the good news.” He smiled at Deanna Troi at Riker’s side. “All of it. Congratulations to you both. On your marriage, and your new command.”
But even then, Kirk felt a tightness in his chest, because the smiles and words of greeting Riker and his bride returned were forced and grim: the smiles of old friends with bad news.
Kirk glanced at Worf and McCoy, saw they sensed the somber mood of the visit as well.
“Is Captain Picard well?” Worf asked.
Jean-Luc’s well-being was the first thought that had come to Kirk, too.
“The captain is fine,” Riker said. But Deanna’s dark Betazoid eyes fixed intently on Kirk, and in the intensity of her gaze, in the knowledge that it was onto his emotional mood she focused her empathic powers, Kirk tensed, suspecting that Jean-Luc was not the reason for this unexpected visit.
Kirk suddenly knew the worst.
“Spock,” he said quietly.
Riker nodded, and Kirk felt the gravity of Qo’noS shift beneath him, as if all the stars had been wrenched from the heavens.
As if something within him, too, had died.
2
U.S.S. TITAN, STARDATE 57471.1
It had been more than a year since Kirk had been on a Starfleet vessel, but he scarcely registered the difference between the artificial gravity of Riker’s Titan and the natural heavy pull of Qo’noS. The starship’s cool air tinged with the faint crisp scent of warm isolinear circuitry, the almost soothing hum of atmospheric circulators and scrubbers, the rushing pulse of water and coolant through hidden conduits; all the sensations of the mighty ship washed around Kirk without his notice.
He stood alone, his mind and being still in turmoil. How many times had he thought he had lost Spock? How many times had he thought the adventure of his own life was over? And always there had been a way back, the unseen chance, a…possibility.
Until now.
He stared at the image frozen on the main viewscreen in the Titan’s darkened ready room. The coliseum on Romulus. The first to be built there uncounted centuries ago.
The flash from the explosion glowed through the rows of arched windows. That flash was the last thing Spock had experienced—seen, felt, known.
It had been a chemical explosive, or so the local Compliance Division had determined. Simple, primitive, deadly. No telltale radiation or antimatter signature to set off the security alarms. Triggered by a mechanical timekeeping device—again, no anomalous energy readings to raise suspicion.
The device had been placed under the elegantly carved stone podium from which Spock had addressed his audience. There were visual sensor logs of his speech—his impassioned plea—which had been transmitted live for other interested parties on Romulus, and recorded for eventual transmission over subspace information channels to Vulcan.
“It is not a question of logic,” Spock had said in the final moments of his life. “It is not a question of emotion. It is a question that can be answered only by the blending of the two. Emotion and logic. Romulan and Vulcan. Two halves of a single entity that has too long been sundered.”
Then Spock had paused to look around at his audience. He had taken a sip of water from a slender cup. And then the nature of what he said subtly changed, became more personal, and Kirk couldn’t help but wonder if in some way Spock had known the next words he spoke would be his last.
“There is rest enough for the individual being, too much and too soon, and we call it death. But for our people, Romulan and Reman and Vulcan, and all who will stand with us, there can be no rest and no ending.
“Only together can we then go on, frontier after frontier. First the stars, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain us.
“And when, together, we have achieved understanding of all of deep space and all the mysteries of time, still we will be beginning.
“Together.
“Unified.
“Or—”
There the record ended.
The penultimate, still image of this recording haunted Kirk: Spock, holding one outstretched hand to his audience, reaching out to all the worlds of the Star Empire and Vulcan’s myriad independent colonies, as the first yellow-orange glow of the bomb’s detonation shone up from beneath him.
Reaching out from the grave, Kirk thought sadly, painfully.
The final image showed only the light that had consumed his friend.
After that, there was nothing; the visual sensors had been rendered inoperative.
Kirk slowly grew aware of Riker watching him, as were Troi and Worf. But McCoy still stared at the dark viewscreen, as if his thoughts were the mirror of Kirk’s. Kirk had no reason to think that they weren’t.
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. The three of them had experienced so much together, to have lost one was to have lost a limb, a heart, a soul.
It came to Kirk that the others were waiting for him to say something.
He cleared his throat, so dry, so unwilling to make a sound. What words could there be to express such a loss?
Move on, Kirk told himself.
He closed his eyes, saw himself in the center chair of the Enterprise. His Enterprise. A crewman had been lost, but the mission must continue. The mission must always continue.
“Do they…do they know who’s responsible?”
“Three groups have claimed responsibility,” Riker said quietly.
“So far,” Troi added.
Kirk looked at her, didn’t understand. “A conspiracy?”
“Confusion,” Riker said. “The political situation on Romulus is…chaotic, to say the least. Interim senators have been appointed to replace those assassinated in the coup, but they have no real authority until the new praetor has been confirmed—and months of internal bickering have to be resolved before that happens. According to our best intelligence, the real power, for the moment, seems to rest with the Imperial Fleet. They’ve at least taken responsibility for maintaining order on Romulan colony worlds, restoring trade routes, keeping the empire together.”
“The Imperial Fleet,” Worf huffed in derision. “They were responsible for Shinzon’s coup.”
Riker sighed, as if he and Worf had had this conversation before. Kirk recognized the feeling. “Yes, Worf. Some elements within the Fleet chose not to act against Shinzon.”
“They did more than not act against him,” Worf countered. “I have reviewed the diplomatic reports. Fleet leadership actively gave their support to Shinzon, in return for his offer to destroy the Earth.”
Kirk knew that post-coup conditions on Romulus were still uncertain. He also knew that the political situation that had allowed Shinzon, a Reman slave—a human slave, at that—to rise to an unprecedented level of power might never be truly comprehended by a non-Romulan. But he didn’t care about any of it, unless it might have something to do with Spock’s death.
Troi’s distinctive, calming voice spoke next. “Worf, I’ve read the reports, too, and that’s not what Starfleet Intelligence has concluded. A majority of Romulan military commanders did agree to not interfere in Shinzon’s claim to be the new praetor. In return, they accepted Shinzon’s promise that he would ensure the Federation would no longer be a threat to Romulan interests.”
Kirk noted that while Worf seemed perfectly ready to argue with Riker, he immediately fell silent when Troi addressed him.
