Crucible: Kirk (11 page)

“No, no, you didn't,” Antonia said. “But…tell me, what were you looking at through the window before?”

“What?” Kirk said, completely nonplussed by the question. “I was just looking to see if it was still snowing.” The more he considered what she'd asked, the less sense it made to him. “Why?” he said. “Is there something else you thought I was looking at?”

“Another woman,” Antonia said.

“What?” Kirk couldn't believe her claim. He had been seeing no one but her, though he now felt a pang of guilt for his errant thought of Edith.

“The stars,” Antonia said.

Kirk shook his head. “I don't understand,” he said. Antonia couldn't possibly know about Edith. Other than Spock and Bones, he didn't think anybody did. Even when he'd sought counseling after Sam and Aurelan's deaths, which had immediately followed his loss of Edith, he hadn't spoken of her to his psychiatrist.

“I think you do understand,” Antonia said. She took a step toward him, but then seemed to consciously stop herself from coming any closer. “Jim, I really have enjoyed being with you. You're fun and funny, a good companion and an interesting man. Certainly you've lived an interesting life.” She paused, then added, “Maybe too interesting.”

“What does that mean?” Kirk wanted to know.

“It means that I don't want to get too involved with a man who's eventually going to leave me,” Antonia said. She spoke without anger or bitterness, but with a conviction that suggested she believed her opinion of their future to be fact, not conjecture.

“I have no intention of leaving you,” Kirk said. “Why would you think that I would?”

“Tell me when you were at the window that you weren't looking at the stars,” she said.

“Honestly, no, I wasn't,” Kirk said. He recalled comparing in his mind the snowflakes to the pinpoints of light in the sky, but that seemed immaterial. “I was just looking out at the snow.”

“I believe you,” Antonia allowed. “But I
have
seen you looking at the stars.”

“Well, yes, of course,” he said. “Doesn't everybody? Don't you?”

“Sure, but not in the same way that you do,” she said. “When I look at the stars, all I see is a beautiful night sky. When you look, I can tell that you're remembering alien worlds you've already visited and imagining the exotic places you've yet to explore.”

“Antonia,” he said. He started to move toward her, but she held her hand up, and he halted a few steps from her. “Yes, I admit that I can recall the different planets I've been to, the strange landscapes I've walked, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to leave you.”

“It also doesn't mean that you're going to stay,” she noted. “That you won't decide at some point to go back to Starfleet.”

“I've been retired for two and a half years now,” Kirk said. “Why do you think I'm suddenly going to want to return to space? Have I ever given you any indication of that? Other than looking at the stars, which as you said, you do yourself?”

Antonia did not answer immediately, and Kirk suspected that when she did, the future of their relationship—or the lack of a future—would turn on her answer. Finally, she said, “No, you haven't acted like you want to go back to Starfleet. But when you do look up at the stars, it just seems like we don't connect.”

“Then that's my fault,” Kirk told her. “I never meant to make you feel disconnected from me. I'll make sure that doesn't happen again.”

“It's all right,” Antonia said. “I don't want to change who you are. I like who you are. I just don't want to be involved in a long-distance, part-time relationship. I've had a couple of those in my life and I don't like them. I want a partner who will be here with me.”

“Antonia,” Kirk said, and this time when he went to her, she didn't try to stop him. When he reached her, he put his hands on her arms and looked her directly in the eyes. “I'm not asking you to be in a relationship while I board a starship and go running off through the galaxy. I'm asking you to move into my house with me, right here in Idaho.”

“And what happens when you go back to Starfleet?” she asked quietly.

“That's not going to happen,” he promised her.

“How can I be sure of that?” she asked him. “How can
you
be sure of that?”

Kirk chuckled. “Next year I'll have lived half a century,” he said. “I think by now I ought to know myself.”

“You
ought
to,” Antonia said, peering at him in an almost pleading way. “But
do
you?”

“Yes,” he told her. “I think I do.”

Antonia nodded, and then she actually smiled. She moved to the side, and Kirk let his hands drop from her arms. She passed him and crossed the room, back over to the window. Holding the curtains open, she looked outside. “I like it when it snows,” she said. “When there's an accumulation, there's a surreal quiet, like a thick blanket's been draped over the land.”

Kirk walked over to Antonia and sent his arms around her midsection, hugging her to him. “I told you that I've got a house up in the Canadian Rockies,” he said. “We should go. Lots of snow up there.”

Antonia let the curtains fall back into place and looked back over her shoulder at him. “Are you trying to bribe me to move in with you?” she said, her tone now playful.

“If that's what it takes,” Kirk said.

She turned in his arms to face him, reaching up and putting her own hands on his shoulders. “Jim, I'm serious about this,” she said. “I like being with you and I can even see us together in the future, but I don't want to get completely involved only to have that taken away from me.”

“I'm not going back to Starfleet,” Kirk said. “I love you, Antonia.” And he did love her, even if she was not the love of his life—

Once more, he put a quick end to such thoughts.

“I love you too, Jim,” Antonia said. She kissed him, and he kissed her back.

Later, he would try to tell himself that he had never lied to her, not really, because at the time, he really hadn't planned on going back to Starfleet. But then, that hadn't been the worst of his lies.

(2271)/2270

Jim Kirk looked at his bloodied counterpart, the city of Mojave in the background, and he found that he couldn't argue anymore. On a superficial level, on a selfish level, he wanted to remain here in the nexus. He wanted to undo the pain that he had caused Antonia, wanted to find happiness with her.

But the other Kirk had been right. Anything he did here would not be real. More than that, though, even if he could change the past that he had shared with Antonia, even if he could prevent himself from returning to Starfleet, it would make no difference. Starfleet had indeed been his excuse to break off his relationship with Antonia—to compel her to break it off with him—but there had been another reason that he hadn't been able to stay with her: she wasn't Edith.

“I'll go,” Kirk said. “I'll try to stop the converging temporal loop.”

“Thank you,” the other Kirk said.

He would try to stop the loop, but he also knew that he would need to do more than that. In addition to traveling back in time to attempt to prevent the shock wave, he would also have to ensure that the
Enterprise-
B still escaped the energy ribbon, and that Picard still managed to stop Soran from wiping out the population of Veridian IV—and he would have to accomplish all of that without altering the timeline. He understood the plan that the other Kirk had devised, but not the logistics of how to accomplish all of it. “When I leave the nexus,” he asked, “how do I reenter it?”

“You don't,” the other Kirk said. “I only ended up here again by chance.”

“But your plan involves me taking action in twenty-two ninety-three and twenty-three seventy-one,” Kirk said. “If I can only exit the nexus once—”

“You'll have to use another means to move safely and surreptitiously through time,” the other Kirk said.

“But how?” he asked. He had traveled in time on a number of occasions, most often by employing the light-speed breakaway factor, taking a starship racing at excessive speed toward a star, circling around it deep within its gravity well, and then pulling away from it in a slingshot-like movement. Even if after leaving the nexus Kirk could somehow acquire a vessel powerful and strong enough to achieve such a maneuver, he could hardly do all of that with any realistic expectation of remaining unobserved. The only other means he had used to travel through time—

And suddenly he knew what had been planned by his alter ego, who then confirmed it: “The Guardian of Forever.”

Kirk could see it. The Guardian's remote location, during a time prior to when it had been discovered, would allow him to move stealthily through time. Except that he foresaw a problem. “I'll need to enter the Guardian in twenty-two ninety-three,” he said. “But—”

“I know,” the other Kirk responded. “The Klingons.”

On the bridge of the
Enterprise,
Kirk peered from his command chair at the main viewscreen. The view astern showed Starfleet's now-empty Einstein research station receding into the distance as the ship sped away from it. A central, compacted sphere formed the main body of the facility, on the top and bottom of which extended a tapering spire. Its hull glistened blue, as though constructed of colored crystal. An arc of the brown planet about which it orbited showed in a corner of the screen.

Visible beyond the station, the gray shapes of the Klingon vessels
Goren
and
Gr'oth
continued their pursuit of the
Enterprise.
Each had a bulbous control section at the forward end of a long, narrow neck, which extended from an angular main body, on either side of which hung its shortened engine structures. The two warships would pass close to the Einstein station.

“Ten seconds,” announced Lieutenant Haines from the sciences station. Several minutes ago, Spock had gone down to engineering to assist Scotty in restoring the weapons and the shields. “Five seconds.”

“Now, Chekov!” Kirk ordered, leaning forward in his chair. At the navigation console, the ensign worked his controls. On the main viewer, Kirk watched as the Einstein station blew apart. The two Klingon vessels vanished for a moment behind the fiery explosion, which immediately began to die in the vacuum of space.

Kirk waited to see if his actions had brought his crew any closer to safety. The irony did not elude him that on the voyage back to Earth, the ship and crew might not make it on this, the last leg of their five-year journey. He held his breath as he gazed at the viewscreen.

The
Goren
emerged from the fading conflagration in pieces, the forward control section no longer attached to the main body of the ship. The two hulls spun through space, until they each exploded. In almost no time at all, nothing remained of the warship.

“Got him!” Chekov said, throwing a clenched fist into the air.

“Easy, mister, we're not out of this yet,” Kirk told him. In mute testimony of that fact, the
Gr'oth
became visible on the viewer, still pursuing the
Enterprise.
But then blue bolts of energy suddenly erupted on the hull of the Klingon vessel.

“A piece of the station penetrated the
Gr'oth
's hull,” Haines said, and Kirk saw part of one spire jutting from beneath the main body of the ship. “I'm reading heavy casualties. They've lost most of their systems, including shields and weapons, and their life support is faltering.”

“They're now drifting,” Lieutenant Sulu said from the helm. On the viewscreen, the
Gr'oth
glided askew of its flight path. Clearly, the
Enterprise
and its crew had won the battle.

“Sulu, reverse course,” Kirk said. “Close to within transporter range.” With no weapons and no shields, with life support failing, the crew of the
Gr'oth
had transformed from dangerous attackers into survivors who needed rescue. He leaned in over the intercom on the arm of his chair, the channel still open from a few moments ago. “Mister Kyle, have our guests escorted to quarters—” Just before the destruction of the Einstein station, its seventeen personnel had been beamed aboard. “—and then have security report to the cargo transporter. We may be taking on some prisoners.”

“Aye, sir,”
Kyle said.

“Kirk out.” He pushed a button beside the intercom, closing the channel.

“Captain,” Lieutenant Uhura said from the communications station, “we're being hailed.”

Kirk felt both frustration and anger swelling within him. “Now they want to talk,” he said. If the Klingons had been willing to do so before beginning their attack, then all of this—the destruction of the Starfleet vessels
Minerva
and
Clemson,
of the Einstein facility, and of the Klingon ships
Rikkon, Vintahg,
and
Goren,
along with the loss of hundreds of lives—could have been averted. “Put them on screen, Lieutenant,” he said.

“Aye, sir,” Uhura said.

On the main viewer, the image of the wounded
Gr'oth
disappeared, replaced by the interior of its bridge. Standing amid clouds of smoke colored green by their alert lighting, the Klingon commander glared forward. Kirk recognized him at once, not just from Starfleet security briefs, but from an encounter he'd had with him a couple of years ago aboard Deep Space Station K-7. The executive officer of the
Gr'oth
back then, Korax now commanded the ship. He had dark brown hair and a goatee, and he wore the regulation black and gold uniform of the Klingon Imperial Fleet.

“Kirk,”
Korax said loudly. He smiled at the same time that his eyes seemed filled with hatred.
“You managed to conduct a battle without the help of the Organians.”
The issue of the powerful incorporeal beings had concerned and confused Starfleet Command, Kirk knew. They had prevented a war between the Federation and the Klingons three years ago, essentially forcing a ceasefire upon both parties, but they had taken no action since then, even when conflicts such as this one had broken out.
“Could it be because the Organians don't approve of Starfleet attempting to build a new weapon to use against us?”

Before her ship had been rammed and obliterated by the
Vintahg,
Captain Chelsea of the
U.S.S. Clemson
had warned Kirk that this had been the Klingons' claim, their justification for sending a quartet of warships here. The charge had no merit, but he also knew that the Klingons must have detected the waves of time displacement emanating from the nearby planet. Although Starfleet had not created the Guardian of Forever, nor intended to employ it as a weapon, Kirk could not dispute its potential use in such a manner. Still, he said, “There is no weapon, Korax.”

“Then you won't mind me sending a landing party down to the planet to investigate for myself,”
the Klingon said.

“Not at all,” Kirk told him, bluffing. He could afford the pretense. With most of the
Gr'oth
's systems down, the heavy casualties it had sustained, and its life support on the verge of failure, the Klingon crew would be fortunate simply to escape the current circumstances with their lives.

Amazingly, Korax actually laughed.
“Funny,”
he said.
“The captains of the
Minerva
and the
Clemson
didn't seem quite so accommodating as you.”

Though he did not reveal the fact, just the mention of the two Starfleet vessels that had been lost to the Klingons enraged Kirk. To cover his fury, he stood from his command chair. “I'm an accommodating fellow,” he said equably. “Let us transport your crew aboard the
Enterprise
before your life support fails.”

Korax threw his head back and laughed loudly.
“You are an amusing fellow, Kirk,”
he said when he'd finished.
“I look forward to bringing your ship back to the Empire. A minor trophy, to be sure, but still a trophy.”

In Kirk's head, a red alert sounded. Along with what Korax had just said came the realization that, although the
Gr'oth
had lost weapons and shields and many other systems, its transporters might still be functioning. In that instant, aware that his own ship's shields remained down, Kirk knew that Korax meant to board the
Enterprise.
“Uhura!” he called. The lieutenant immediately cut communications with the
Gr'oth,
and the image of the enemy vessel floating through space returned to the main viewscreen. “Chekov, fire torpedoes!”

The ensign operated his controls, to no effect. “Captain, weapons are all offline.”

Damn!
“Clear the bridge!” Kirk ordered. Korax would send a boarding party here and to engineering first, he knew. He looked around and saw Haines rising from her position at the sciences station, Uhura from communications, and Lieutenant Leslie from the primary engineering console, but Sulu and Chekov still sat at their posts. “Now!” he yelled, and the two men finally moved. Kirk waited for the young ensign to pass him, then followed him up the steps to the outer section of the bridge.

By the time Kirk arrived at the turbolift, the entire bridge crew had entered before him. As he himself stepped inside the car, he saw Sulu's eyes widen, the lieutenant peering past him, back onto the bridge. Kirk guessed in that moment that the Klingons had begun to materialize behind him. He reached for the lift's activation wand, but Leslie already had his hand on it. “Deck two,” the lieutenant said. Kirk expected a disruptor bolt to blast him in two at any moment, but then the doors squeaked closed behind him. As the turbolift started to descend, he realized that they'd actually made it.

And then an explosion rocked the lift, knocking it sideways. Kirk hurtled forward, raising his arms to protect not just himself, but his crewmates. His head struck the side of the lift, and then—

Everything went dark.

Kirk sat in an easy chair, a hardcover novel—the twenty-first-century classic
Renaissance and Blues
—open on his lap. He'd read the same sentence half a dozen times and now decided to give up altogether. So many thoughts filled his head, though one image in particular kept returning to his mind.

After closing the book, Kirk reached forward and set it atop the bed, then rose and crossed the quarters that Commodore Stocker had assigned him here at Starbase 10. Kirk had been released from the station's infirmary only this morning, after spending sixteen days there in recovery. The explosion that had demolished the
Enterprise
bridge and killed the members of a Klingon boarding party had sent the turbolift plunging down its shaft until it had become wedged between decks. All six members of the bridge crew had survived, though Kirk had struck his head and fallen into a coma. During the three days he'd remained unconscious, Scotty and his engineering crew had repaired the ship enough to get it back to base.