Scott’s next words were just what Kirk had hoped wouldn’t happen.
“Captain-the tendrils are back! They’re growing over the core!”
Norinda had looked into Kirk’s mind and had learned what Spock was attempting to do. She was coming back to stop him.
“Now what?” Picard asked as he studied the sensor scans from the Belle Reve.
“Their warp core appears to be coming online again,” Worf said with suspicion.
“Get Geordi on those readings,” Picard ordered. “Stand ready to drop shields and use our tractor beams to push the Belle Reve free before her core explodes.”
“This could be another trick, sir.”
Picard shook his head. “It might’ve worked when we were the only ship within range. But the Tucker and the Garneau can lay down a crossfire to keep Kirk from going to warp.”
Then La Forge reported from engineering. “Captain, I’m watching the scans of the Belle Reve, and they’re in real trouble.”
“Give me details,” Picard said.
“I’m seeing multiple attempts to eject the core… they’ve depressurized their engineering hold… but the breach is about to go critical.”
“What is going on in that ship?” Picard asked. But his crew had no answer.
The turbolift doors slid open onto the bridge. Kirk sprinted out to join Scott, glanced back to see Spock heading slowly but deliberately for the life-support station.
“I’ve done all I can,” Scott said. “But it’s as if the core has a mind of its own.”
Kirk followed Scott’s gaze to the center viewscreen, still displaying a visual sensor image of engineering.
A tangled mass of tendrils fully encased the core. Flashes of blazing golden light shot through a few small gaps between the tendrils as the core pulsed in its run-up to full power.
And with each flash, a tendril peeled off from the main body, bent down to the deck, and rose up as a humanoid.
Among them, Kirk saw Norinda take shape, once again in admiral’s uniform. Others joining her wore Starfleet uniforms from more than a decade earlier, specialist colors bright on their shoulders.
“Are any of those human?” Kirk asked.
“If they’re movin’ around in a vacuum, ye can be sure they’re not,” Scott said, stoutly unafraid. He checked his controls. “We’re ten seconds from breach, sir. And there’s nothin’ can be done….”
For just an instant, Kirk felt sorrow well up in him, not for himself but for all who had trusted him, whom he had now let down. Bones and Scotty, the holographic doctor, and most of all, his son.
But just as quickly as it arose, that sorrow vanished as Kirk remembered-
“Spock!”
He wheeled to see Spock at the life-support station, methodically making adjustments to one of the settings on the console.
Before Kirk could even think to wonder which settings Spock was changing, he knew the answer, even if he didn’t understand it. He felt his own weight double, heard Scott’s chair creak, McCoy’s annoyed exclamation of protest.
Kirk chose an empty chair, dropped into it with a bone-jarring thud.
“Spock…?” he gasped.
Kirk struggled to draw breath as his body grew even heavier, his shoulders slumped forward. All around him, he could hear console cabinets groan, some small popping sounds.
Spock had set the ship’s artificial gravity to at least three times Earth normal and it was still increasing.
Kirk fought for breath in the unexpected onslaught.
McCoy was lying flat on the deck, apparently unconscious.
The hologram was unaffected by the change in gravity and stood over his fallen fellow physician, tricorder in hand.
“Captain!” Scott muttered. “Look!”
Kirk fought to turn his head toward Scott. The engineer’s hand trembled on his console as he strained to point to the viewscreen.
Kirk blinked slowly, painfully. The shape of his eyes was being distorted by the increasing gravity, making his vision blur.
But with extreme effort he focused on the humanoid forms in engineering and saw them decomposing. In their place, twisting pillars of black sand devolved into smoke, fading from existence along with the tendrils that had swarmed the warp core.
Free of their influence, the ship’s computer now accepted Scott’s override commands.
The pulsing light in the core slowed and dimmed as once again it shut down.
The breach had been averted.
Kirk slumped in the chair, concentrating on each hard-won breath.
“Gravity, Spock?”
“As I calculated,” Spock answered calmly, “four times Earth normal is sufficient to prevent the Totality from reaching us.”
Kirk tried to nod in understanding and instantly regretted it. His chin remained on his chest, and the back of his neck paid the price.
“Reach us from where?” Kirk grunted, forcing his head up so he could see Spock again. The Totality was so unlike anything in this universe, he concluded that they could have only come from some other dimensional realm, some other reality.
But Kirk was not Spock.
“They are from here,” Spock said. “The Totality arose in our universe.”
Kirk blinked as dark stars flickered at the edge of his vision. “But they’re so different….”
“On the contrary,” Spock said, betraying no sign that he also was being subjected to four times Earth gravity. “They are the life-force that inhabits ninety-six percent of the universe. It is we, chemical-based biological life, that occupy the remaining four percent.
“This is their universe, Jim. To them, we’re the extremophiles, life as they do not know it, or understand it. In effect, we are little more than parasites that the Totality feels compelled to uplift or exterminate.
“They will allow us no other fate.”
24
THE OORT CLOUD, SECTOR 001
STARDATE 58567.8
There were five ships now in that cold dark region. Earth’s sun was just another point of light, too far and too dim to reveal the vessels as they held their positions at relative stop. They were perceptible only because they blocked the stars. Around their dim shapes slowly drifted ice clouds and the slow, tumbling rocks and debris from stars that had died billions of years ago, yet now provided the raw material of life for a new round of star-building that would lead to a new generation of life.
The Belle Reve remained locked to the Enterprise. To Picard, the two ships joined brought to mind images of fossilized prehistoric beasts, each with a death grip on the other, trapped forever in their unyielding battle from which neither could emerge the victor.
The other three ships were spectators to that frozen conflict. The Tucker and the Garneau had been joined by the Titan. The Belle Reve would never withstand their combined assault, and yet, as long as it remained close to the Enterprise, it could not be attacked.
