He swung out his arms, preparing to brace for impact, and only then did he realize that someone- something– was grasping his legs, trying to hold him back.
At the same time, something else pulled on his forearms.
He thumped against a hard surface. He used the resistance of it to bend forward, wrenching one arm free of the thing that gripped him, then his leg.
Kirk’s vision blurred as smeared and out-of-focus images began to whirl around him, faster, faster—
A masculine voice rang out.
“Leave my father alone!”
A swirling, disorienting vortex of black particles spun itself out of existence-leaving Kirk behind, saved by the one he’d come to rescue.
Joseph.
Picard was at the Belle Reve’s navigation console, piloting Kirk’s ship. For the gravity weapon to work, each move the Belle Reve made had to be coordinated with the Enterprise. As much as Picard respected Mister Scott’s engineering expertise, this was war.
The two starships closed on Vulcan, and this close to the Totality’s base, they took fire.
Picard was getting used to the smaller ship’s capabilities, though, and he guided it through twisting dives and maneuvers to draw the worst of the phaser blasts coming from the Vulcan ships, flipping back or spinning into hundred-and-eighty-degree turns to catch an attacking ship as it passed between his craft and the Enterprise.
In each encounter, success took only seconds. Together, the two ships created a focused field of increased gravity that instantly drove the Totality projections back to their dark-matter realm.
Ship after ship fell before them, some emptied entirely of their crews, others staffed only by puzzled Vulcans who had seen their commanders dissolve into black and vanish.
As the Belle Reve and the Enterprise flew on, closing relentlessly on their target, McCoy and Scott relayed critical information to the Vulcan vessels now free of Totality control: Increase the local gravity around their warp cores to the equivalent of four times Earth normal, and the dark-matter projections would be locked out forever.
The nightside disk of Vulcan filled the center viewscreen.
Picard picked out the glittering web of lights that identified Shi’Kahr.
Entering orbit was not an option.
He transmitted to Riker to brace the Enterprise for atmospheric entry.
They were going in.
Kirk grimaced as he pushed himself up to sit on the hard floor of the command center. He was cold, shaking. Grimly, he diagnosed himself: His symptoms were those of internal bleeding. It would be only a matter of minutes before he succumbed to shock.
But even in that precarious condition he felt safe, because his son stood beside him, facing down their common enemy.
Norinda.
She stood five meters away, naked, as if trying one last time to reach deep within the most primitive parts of her adversaries’ brains to enthrall them.
Her features shifted like a living sculpture, from the young humanoid woman Kirk had first met, to the female version of Joseph’s own appearance. But the perfection of both guises was marred by troubled frowns of nervous indecision.
“You promised me you wouldn’t hurt him,” Joseph said. Kirk was pleased to hear something new in his son’s voice; this form of Norinda’s appearance, so close to his own, had lost its power over him.
“I wasn’t hurting him,” Norinda said plaintively. “I was giving him the ultimate gift.”
“He doesn’t want it,” Joseph insisted. “You said you’d leave him alone-like me.”
Norinda took a step forward, arms outspread, offering herself as if she couldn’t comprehend how Joseph- how anyone-could refuse her.
“I have to leave you alone. But no one else. Not even James.”
At that, as if suddenly sensing danger, Joseph moved to shield Kirk.
“Then you lied to me,” Joseph said.
“Only because I love you most,” Norinda confessed. She extended a hand to Joseph, as if wanting to draw him closer. “Let me show you how much.”
“Dad…” Joseph said, and that tentative appeal from his child broke through Kirk’s exhaustion and injuries. He lurched to his feet as a narrow tendril of black writhed from Norinda’s outstretched hand and within seconds took on a separate form.
Teilani, young, vibrant, unscarred, as she’d been when Kirk had followed her to Chal.
Now Teilani faced Kirk as Norinda faced Joseph, both apparitions reflecting the pain of rejection, both reaching out in supplication and hope.
Their voices blended in an eerie harmonic.
“I bring you love,” they promised.
Then their arms uncoiled like pillars of smoke, and without thought Kirk pushed Joseph to one side and threw himself to the other as the tendrils swirled into the empty space where father and son had been.
Breathing hard, dizzy to the point of nausea, Kirk knew he couldn’t evade another attack. He was certain that Norinda knew the same.
But still he watched in apprehension as each of the projections produced a slender tendril that uncoiled from their hands. The tendrils met and merged to grow again, and another Teilani took shape, her face fuller, stomach swollen, just as she had appeared when she had been pregnant with Joseph.
The younger Teilani, the older, and Norinda, they advanced on Kirk in precise and unnatural lockstep.
“Embrace…” they said together.
Before entering the Vulcan atmosphere, the Enterprise and the Belle Reve neutralized eight additional sentinel ships. But past that point, no other vessel challenged them.
Picard smiled in grim triumph as he pictured hundreds of Vulcan vessels suddenly and inexplicably having their gravity jump to four g’s, no doubt startling even the Vulcan crews as they watched the duplicates among them dissolve away. Scott and McCoy had been successful in relaying their critical information to the Vulcan fleet.
Ionized trails of superheated plasma marked the trajectories of the Belle Reve and the Enterprise as they continued unimpeded.
Shi’Kahr grew on the horizon.
Kirk moved back as the thing that was young Teilani extended her formless arms to wrap around him. The instant one of them solidified against his back and began to urge him forward, he shifted and twisted, and threw his attacker against the other two.
Seizing his moment of freedom, Kirk scrambled back and rolled behind a bank of workstations on the first tier, shouting for his son to run.
The moment he reached cover, Kirk stole a glimpse across the open floor, checking the disposition of his enemy, searching for Joseph…
… and where there’d been three versions of humanoid females, Kirk now saw six.
Teilani, young and beautiful. Teilani, pregnant, older, scarred, but full of beauty within. Norinda as he had first encountered her. Norinda as a Reman. Teilani in the clinging black flightsuit she had worn the day they had first met. And most cruelly, Teilani in her wedding gown.
“Be loved…” the shadows of lost loves pleaded. “Be loved,” they entreated, one voice in many bodies, no longer an invitation but a near-deafening command.
The air in the command center changed as the rustle of tendrils and the shifting of bodies grew louder. Kirk stayed hidden, unwilling to risk betraying his position to see how many more beings Norinda would become in her relentless quest to have him accept her.
