“What’re you mumbling about this time?” McCoy asked. He pushed himself up from his duty station and joined Spock at Kirk’s side. He still hadn’t completely recovered from the strain of two days spent under four gravities.
“You’re just dropping me off, Bones. Then you’ll be letting Jean-Luc out of his cabin and giving him command of the ship.”
McCoy reacted with as much surprise as the duplicated Vulcan had shown-though in his case, he didn’t hide it. “Who came up with that harebrained scheme?” He stared fixedly at Spock as if he already knew the answer.
Kirk looked past Spock and McCoy. “Scotty, are we still being pursued?”
“Aye, that we are. Th’Enterprise is three hours behind and closing fast.”
“My fight’s with Norinda,” Kirk said to McCoy. “Jean-Luc’s fight… your fight… the whole Federation– “
“The Totality,” McCoy said in resignation.
“All I want is my son back.” Kirk put a hand on the arm of his chair. “The person who sits here, he needs to want more.”
McCoy snorted in disdain. “You think this tub and one starship can defeat the Totality?”
“It’s not one starship, Bones, it’s the Enterprise. Spock knows what to do. Jean-Luc will coordinate the ships. And in a little less than a day, the Totality will be an unpleasant memory and you’re going to be looking after Joseph again.”
McCoy furrowed his brow. “I don’t like the way you said that. Why aren’t you going to be looking after Joseph?”
Kirk had made his decision and his peace. He didn’t need to or want to talk about either. “There’s only one way Norinda’s going to release Joseph.” He knew how difficult this would be for his friends. “So his future is going to be up to you and Spock and Scotty because– “
“Don’t say it,” McCoy warned.
Kirk heard the anger in McCoy’s voice, the frustration, knew the love that both emotions sprang from.
But he had to tell his friends the truth.
“This time, I won’t be coming back.”
It was night in Shi’Kahr, and the boulevards were quiet.
Kirk had anticipated as much.
Tall buildings surrounded the plaza where Scott had beamed him, directly to the coordinates he’d been given. The buildings’ windows blazed with lights. The cityscape before him glowed with russet, red, and amber-the rich colors of the smooth-skinned towers that rose all around him. Their flowing corners and smooth contours harkening back through the centuries to the birth of Vulcan architecture, when primitive structures had been formed from simple clays and baked in the sun.
Vulcan would always be a world of tradition, ensured by the fact that mind-melds kept ancient memories alive for generations.
Kirk wondered if mind-melds were the reason this ancient city, Vulcan’s capital, was so quiet tonight.
Had the word gone out, flashing from mind to mind, that the governing authority no longer existed, its politicians and civil servants replaced by duplicates? Did Vulcans huddle in their homes, meditating, seeking the solace of logic in the face of the Totality? Or had the Totality’s own telepathic energies found Vulcans to be open receptors, their minds defenseless before an enemy that turned their own strengths, their own intellects, against them?
It was not a question he could answer. It was not a question he wanted to answer. There were others better equipped than he to undertake that struggle.
Tonight, in the vast and dark and silent city, he had only one goal, one purpose.
He walked across the empty plaza toward the glaring beacon of light that stood out so prominently from the subdued tones of Shi’Kahr.
Ahead of him, constructed with the bold angles and sharp corners of presumptuous human architecture, bathed by banks of light that matched the blue-white spectrum of Earth’s sun, was the great hall of Starfleet Command’s Joint Operations Center.
Vulcan Space Central was headquartered there.
And it was there, he’d been told as the Belle Reve had been escorted into orbit, that he was expected.
The warm dry wind of the Vulcan night made his dark jacket flutter. He heard the fabric snap against the inductance barrel of the gravity-projector weapon he carried strapped to his back.
Kirk’s boots made staccato echoes as he drew near the wide, brilliantly lit walkway that ran from the plaza to the building’s entrance.
No one barred his way.
Even the guard kiosks, usually staffed at all times, if only for ceremonial reasons, were empty.
Kirk glanced down at the combat tricorder strapped to his wrist.
He wasn’t even being scanned.
Either the Totality already knew everything there was to know about him and what he carried with him this night, or Norinda had decided that in no way could he ever represent a threat.
Kirk looked forward to changing her mind.
He entered the blinding white building, walking beneath the gleaming silver emblem of Starfleet Command.
One last time, he thought.
The entry hall was empty, and it shouldn’t have been.
On an ordinary day, or night, hundreds of beings would be in motion across the polished white marble floor, some hurrying, some walking slowly in hushed conversation, many in Starfleet uniforms, others in alien garb.
But it was as if Starfleet had already been defeated.
The only sound in the cavernous space was the white-noise rush of the fountain, where a cascade of clear water shimmered down a carved stone replica of the great seal of the Federation.
Kirk had been given no exact instructions, other than to arrive at this building. Another person might have waited in the desolate hall with its towering glass walls and arching, light-studded ceiling.
Not Kirk.
Since there was no one here to greet him, he walked directly to the moving stairways leading to the upper level. Banks of bronze-doored turbolifts were there. They would take him to the command level.
The moving stairways were motionless.
He took that to be a good sign because he knew they operated by gravity control. The Totality obviously had reason not to have operational gravity generators nearby.
Kirk climbed the sleek, static stairs.
As he reached the upper level, a single turbolift chimed.
Its open door was an invitation.
Kirk accepted, entered. The lift dropped.
The swift ride lasted thirty seconds, long enough to take him five hundred meters underground. Time enough for Kirk to recall that the Vulcans had been insulted when humans had insisted on burying Starfleet’s regional command center beneath half a kilometer of dispersal shielding. Where was the logic, Vulcans had protested, in thinking that an enemy could penetrate far enough into the Federation, and then far enough into the Vulcan home system, to be a threat to this center?
But after V’Ger had come within seconds of obliterating Earth, and the Vulcans had done a quick check of how many space probes they had lost mysteriously over the centuries, their objections quickly faded.
There was logic in being prudent, after all, they decided.
The turbolift door opened.
Kirk stepped into a small entrance foyer, saw a series of three varicolored emblems worked into the polished white floor.
One was a stylized IDIC showing Mount Selaya, marked with Vulcan script. Another was the Starfleet emblem. The last was a variation of the Federation seal, ringed in English and Vulcan script.
