the wrong side of the door.
The other nine were transported out of sealed rooms in the Sovereign’s saucer. They’d been in the lower decks where the connecting corridors had been opened to space and the emergency containment shields had failed.
Of the twelve, most had suffered only minor burns. Remarkably, McCoy reported, even the crew member with the cruelly distended hands could be expected to recover within a few weeks.
By the time the last survivor was safely on board Kirk’s ship, Vulcan Space Central was in full control, completing a well-coordinated rescue operation with typical Vulcan efficiency. Small hunter-seeker craft darted among the debris, scanning for life signs, sending their results to T’Karath-class hospital ships equipped with multiple transporter stations.
During the extraction of survivors, emergency salvage vessels used tractor beams to stabilize the largest intact sections of the ship and any debris large enough to survive entry into the Vulcan atmosphere.
To Kirk, the intense two-hour rescue passed as if only minutes. But the moment the Vulcans informed him that all life signs had been accounted for and asked him to withdraw, Kirk immediately headed down to sickbay.
He had to know.
“Admiral Janeway,” Kirk said as he entered the crowded medical compartment where McCoy tended to the lucky twelve.
Joseph was working at McCoy’s side, bringing him the medkits he needed, cleaning up beside him.
A part of Kirk noted his son’s actions, pleased, but his concern for the admiral overwhelmed any parental pride. “Does anyone know what happened to her?”
No one from the Sovereign did.
They recalled an announcement from the exec telling the crew to prepare for immediate departure. Less than a minute later, they’d felt the explosion-about the time, Kirk knew, it had taken for the warp engines to come online in the standard run-up to operational power.
The main lights had flickered out then. Gravity failed next. More explosions followed.
The darkness and confusion had vanished suddenly for the twelve survivors as they rematerialized on Kirk’s ship.
That was the extent of their knowledge. None of them knew Janeway’s fate.
Disappointed, Kirk collected the survivors’ identification codes, to transmit them to the Starfleet Joint Operations Center, Vulcan. Returning to his bridge, he discovered that Scott had already been making inquiries.
Kathryn Janeway’s official status was “missing.” She had not been rescued; neither had her body been found. The Vulcans calculated that it could take days before all the salvaged debris could be examined and scanned. From the force of the explosions that had torn through the starship, they also stated that it was possible not all bodies would be recovered.
Given what Janeway had told him about the investigation into the unexplained disappearances, Kirk couldn’t help but wonder if some of the missing might have vanished not by explosion but by whatever phenomenon had claimed Spock.
Inexorably caught by the mysteries wheeling within mysteries, Kirk flew his vessel to a Vulcan ship of the line, the Soval. Docking was not required. The Vulcans beamed the Sovereign survivors directly from the Belle Reve’s small sickbay and the adjacent corridor where McCoy had set out cots.
It was over.
Kirk felt the unreality of the moment. No doubt within the corridors of Starfleet Operations on Vulcan an investigation was already under way. Encrypted communiques were flashing back and forth between Vulcan and Earth. Starfleet vessels throughout the quadrants were being issued new orders.
War plans were being made.
But Kirk and his crew, his friends, were isolated from the action. Mere spectators, if that.
Kirk bridled at the thought. But then, wasn’t that what he had wanted? To go his own way, and not be subjected to the whims of Starfleet?
“What now, Captain?”
Kirk looked over to Scott at his engineering station, and for one of the few times in his life, didn’t have an immediate answer.
I’m losing my command edge, Kirk thought. That was one of the characteristics shared by all great leaders: the ability to make quick decisions. Provided it was accompanied by the wisdom to change course when new facts came to light.
“Lay in a course to Earth,” Kirk said at last. He’d make contact with Starfleet Intelligence, see what he could find out about their efforts to find a pattern to the disappearances. He’d follow any trail that might lead him to Spock.
The turbolift doors opened and McCoy and Joseph came onto the bridge.
Kirk turned in his chair. “How well do you remember Earth?” he asked his son. Joseph had been much younger the last time they had visited.
Joseph brightened. “I remember the horses.” They’d gone to a ranch resort in Iowa near the site of the Kirk family farm, on the outskirts of Riverside. But the land was now a world heritage park, and not even the foundations of the house or the barn had remained. Kirk recalled that, in an earlier time, there’d even been a statue of himself nearby. But that was gone, too. The old saying was true: Fame was fleeting. Nor could it compare with the simple joy of riding with his child.
Kirk dismissed his reverie, gestured at the container Joseph carried. “What’s that?”
“Dunno,” Joseph said as he looked to McCoy for assistance.
“The Soval beamed over medical supplies to replace what we used,” McCoy said. “This came with them.”
Joseph held the container out to Kirk. “It’s addressed to you, Dad.”
Kirk took it, curious. It was a basic shipping package, large enough for a few books, perhaps a pair of boots. But it was light, almost as if it were empty.
He tapped the container’s label and it switched on, displaying his name and his ship, but giving no indication of the sender.
“The Vulcans beamed this on board?” Kirk asked.
McCoy nodded. “Whatever it is, that means it’s at least safe.”
Kirk looked for the tab pull, gave it a tug, and the molecular seal that ringed the container flashed once, dividing the package into top and bottom.
Kirk slipped off the top, looked inside, then carefully removed the object that was in the container, held it up and to the side.
It was a triangle of smooth metal, unidentifiable in terms of function or planet of origin. But Kirk had seen it often enough to know exactly what it was.
His ship had a visitor.
“You’re on my bridge,” Kirk said to the object, “and only my crew is present.”
At that, he felt the object slip from his fingers as it became fully active, and after a few moments in which the air around it wavered and grew optically dense, a holographic duplicate of Doctor Lewis Zimmerman took shape on the bridge. The figure was clothed in a Starfleet uniform to which the triangular object-a highly advanced holographic emitter-was now attached on the upper left arm, just below the shoulder.
“Captain Kirk, I presume,” the Emergency Medical Hologram said. “We meet again.”
“Doctor.” This wasn’t just a holographic duplicate of Doctor Zimmerman, it was the duplicate-the EMH from the Starship Voyager, who had developed self-awareness and sentience on that vessel’s perilous journey. “I’m glad you survived.”
“So am I,” the hologram replied. Then he beamed at McCoy and Joseph. “Doctor McCoy, always a pleasure. And Joseph. The admiral was right, you have grown.”
It took Kirk but an instant to process the Doctor’s seemingly innocuous observation. If the Doctor had had time to speak to Admiral Janeway about Joseph, then-
“Janeway survived?”
