inhabitants against each other-utilizing the resources already in place?
Kirk thought back to his own first meeting with Norinda, when she herself had claimed to be a refugee from the Totality. Though he’d only realized it now, her game plan had been revealed from the beginning: all the starship captains who had come to her aid, she had pitted against one another. But that competition hadn’t been a game as she had described it-and as Kirk had accepted it. It was a carefully calculated ploy to determine which of the species inhabiting this quadrant would be the easiest to turn into a weapon to be used against the others.
At the time, he’d been surprised when Norinda had awarded victory to an unknown species with an undetectable vessel. Only in hindsight had Starfleet realized the Romulans had won Norinda’s contest.
Thus the Romulan Star Empire had become the incubator for Norinda and her plans to sow dissension.
Until her second encounter with Kirk.
When Spock had staged what appeared to have been his assassination on Romulus, Kirk had investigated, arriving just as Norinda’s plan to foment civil war between Romulus and Remus had been set to proceed.
Kirk’s arrival had not been a coincidence. Spock’s desperate action had been triggered by the inexplicable resistance his unification movement encountered. Spock had suspected there was an unknown group spreading dissension, but hadn’t know it was Norinda and her followers in the Jolan Movement.
But Kirk had exposed Norinda’s manipulation of Romulan politics. With Picard and with Spock, with the Belle Reve and the holographic doctor, and even with the help of Joseph, Kirk had revealed the true nature of Norinda and maintained the stability of the Romulan Empire.
Norinda’s plan had failed.
But in confronting an intelligence with the capacity to conquer entire galaxies, Kirk knew, it was the height of arrogance to think that there would not be a second plan.
“They couldn’t force us into a war,” Kirk whispered to Marinta, “so now they’re working to keep us confined by destroying our ability to travel between the stars.”
“Trapped,” Marinta agreed. “So they can systematically eliminate us, world by world. Their logic is unassailable.”
The Romulan’s cool summation triggered a flash of anger in Kirk. “You think we should give up?”
Marinta turned toward him, and with an extremely familiar expression, raised an eyebrow at the question.
“On the contrary. The reason I’ve contacted you is because you’ve shown a consistent ability to succeed in the face of logic.”
There was something familiar about those words, something unusual about this Romulan, but Kirk was unable to define either characteristic in words. He only felt them.
“Who else knows about the recording?”
Marinta and he had stopped to talk, and Kirk could see she was uncomfortable with remaining still. Now she scanned the crowded market street. “Other than the specialists who died at Starbase Four-ninety-nine, only a handful.”
Kirk’s suspicion grew. “Why haven’t you shown it to more people?”
Marinta turned, the movement sharp and sudden, and for the first time Kirk saw her Romulan passion rise above what he took to be her Vulcan training.
“The people at the starbase died, Captain. Everyone who gets the recording and tries to study it dies.”
Kirk stared at the young woman, and not because of her display of emotion.
Marinta appeared to sense something had changed.
“What is it?” she asked.
Kirk didn’t know where his next words would lead, but had to find out. “You called me ‘Captain.’ There’re not too many people who do that these days.”
Marinta closed her eyes as if realizing an error. But she didn’t try to bluff.
She met Kirk’s gaze, let him see she had nothing to hide. “I spent a great deal of time with Ambassador Spock. I worked with him on Romulus. A year ago… that night in Primedian, at the coliseum…”
“When he staged his assassination,” Kirk said.
Marinta didn’t argue. “I was with him. I was… part of the plan.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me that from the beginning?” Kirk asked.
Marinta’s nerves won the battle and she turned on her heel, began walking quickly.
Kirk caught up with her. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked again.
“I was concerned you’d hold it against me. That you’d doubt the veracity of the Monitor transmission.”
Kirk had the feeling that he was missing something, that Marinta hadn’t fully explained what she wanted.
“I don’t understand what’s so important,” Kirk told her. “Even if the recording’s real, all it does is explain what happened to the Monitor.”
“It’s more than that, Captain Kirk.” Marinta stopped again, and with a display of anger that did not fit her Vulcan robes, pressed the padd player into Kirk’s hand. “This recording could tell us how to defeat the Totality.”
Kirk made no move to slip the padd into his own cloak. “Not in what I saw.”
Marinta’s eyes swept the street like a soldier’s on patrol. “There’s more to the transmission than seven minutes of visual-sensor recordings. Captain Lewinski compressed three years’ worth of research into the signal. Everything he and his crew had been able to learn about the Totality’s subspace conduit, the way one of the Kelvan probes had been destroyed, the nature of what Lewinski and his crew called ‘the Distortion’ that was coming after them. It’s all in that recording. All you need to do is separate the data from the noise.”
“Why me?” Kirk asked. “Why not the authorities?”
Marinta looked up at Kirk as if he had heard nothing she’d told him. “The Totality can be anywhere, be anyone…. Captain Kirk, there are no more authorities. There’s no one we can trust.”
Kirk could understand Marinta’s argument, but he needed one more piece of reassurance .
“How do you know you can trust me?” he asked her.
With an expression of angry defiance, Marinta tugged back her hood, grabbed Kirk’s right hand, placed it on her face as she positioned her own hand on Kirk’s katra points.
There in the street, surrounded by shoppers, watched by gawkers, she gave the ancient incantation.
“My mind to your mind… my thoughts to your thoughts…”
Kirk felt the familiar onslaught of telepathic contact. “But you’re Romulan…” he gasped.
“Our minds are one,” Marinta intoned.
And then Kirk felt his thoughts and her thoughts entwine and blend and both participants shared the presence of Spock in their lives and their minds.
He was the common ground that bound them together.
The common ground that let Marinta know she could trust Kirk, that let Kirk know he could trust her-a Romulan who believed in the unification of her people and Vulcans, who had worked for that cause, worked for Spock, trained in the Vulcan disciplines, and found within her mind the ancient talents that reached back through time to when Romulans and Vulcans had been one and the same.
Kirk broke the contact. He had seen and sensed just enough, and felt no need to progress to greater depths of intimacy.
But one clear emotion rang loud and true as he took his hand from Marinta’s face.
“You loved him….”
She didn’t deny it.
And then a spotlight blasted down on them from overhead and Kirk heard amplified voices bellow: “Outworlders, remain where you are. You are under detention.”
The authorities had arrived.
Authorities who could not be trusted.
16
