Crucible: Kirk (16 page)

Antonia set the horseshoe down on the tray with a loud thump. “And what did Harry want?” she asked flatly.

Realizing that he'd unintentionally put distance between Antonia and him when he'd moved across the room, he walked back to the corner of the bed. “He wanted to tell me that he has a position open for me at Starfleet Headquarters.”

Antonia gazed at him for a long moment without saying anything. Then she lifted the tray from her lap and set it gently down next to her on the mattress. As she reached for her silk robe at the foot of the bed, she said, “You told me that you would never go back to Starfleet.”

“I didn't think I would,” Kirk said. “But this is strictly a supervisory position, maybe with an opportunity to do some instruction at the academy.”

Antonia stood from the bed and quickly pulled her robe on, as though she didn't want Kirk to see her naked form. After cinching the belt tightly about her waist, she looked up at him, her pain obvious. “You told me you weren't going back,” she repeated.

“Antonia, this would be at Starfleet Headquarters, in San Francisco,” he said. “I would wake up every morning in Idaho with you, and go to bed every night with you. Things wouldn't have to change that much.”

Antonia's eyes widened. “You're actually considering taking this position?” she asked.

Kirk glanced down, not wanting to make this any more difficult for either one of them, but knowing that he had to tell her. Looking back up, he said, “I already accepted it.”

“What!?” Antonia said.

Kirk stepped over to her, his arms out. “Antonia,” he said, but she pushed his arms away and raced past him. “Antonia,” Kirk said again, but she did not respond. Instead, she stood beside the upholstered bench in front of the bed, where she'd tossed her clothes last night. She quickly pulled on her socks and underwear, then her blue jeans. Kirk walked over to her and placed his hand on her back. “Antonia—”

“Leave me alone,” she said, and she grabbed her sweater from the bench and marched to the other side of the room. Keeping her back to him, she took off her robe and let it fall to the floor. She tugged her sweater on over her head, then pulled at her long hair to get it through as well.

When finally she looked back over at him, he said, “We won't have to be apart. You spend a lot of your days with your practice anyway. We could still be together.”

“Tell me,” she said. “When did Harry contact you? When did you accept his offer?”

“Last week,” Kirk admitted. “A few days before we left Idaho.”

Antonia shook her head. “And you waited until we came up here to tell me.” She walked over to the other side of the bed and bent over it toward the tray. “You made sure to make me Ktarian eggs before you decided to tell me,” she said, lifting the plate up with two fingers and dropping it noisily back onto the tray. The grape juice splashed over the rim of its glass. “You made sure to give me a symbol of good luck before you told me.” She picked up the horseshoe and then let it clatter onto the tray. Fixing him with a glare, her voice rising, she said, “You made love with me last night knowing that you would do this to me today.” She shoved her hand beneath the tray and sent it flying across the bed and onto the floor.

“I didn't mean to hurt you,” Kirk said, even though, on some level, he had always known that he would.

“Your intentions don't really mean much, do they?” Antonia said. “Because you think it's more important for you to go back to Starfleet than it is not to hurt me. You told me that you would never go back. You
promised
me.”

“I promised that we wouldn't have a long-distance, part-time relationship,” Kirk said, defensive despite knowing what he was doing to this woman that he loved—that he loved, but not enough.

“No,” Antonia said. “You promised me that you wouldn't go back to Starfleet.”

Kirk raised his arms and then let them fall back to his sides. “At the time, I meant that,” he said. “I really didn't believe that I'd ever want to do something like this, but things change.”

“That doesn't make your promise any less of a lie,” Antonia told him.

“I didn't lie,” Kirk bristled. “I believed what I told you at the time.”

“A promise isn't something with a time limit on it,” Antonia said. “What good does it do for somebody to promise one thing one minute that they believe and intend to live up to, if in the next minute they decide that they've changed and so now the promise no longer applies?” She strode over to where she'd dropped her robe and bent to pick it up. When she stood back up, she said, “You can rationalize this any way you want to, but you lied to me.”

Though he knew it would do no good—he'd always known it—he said, “I can be back in Idaho every night.”

“I know you mean that right now,” she said, “but ‘things change.'” She spat the last words back at him, a rebuke that told him she would never again trust him. “One day you'll come home from Starfleet to tell me that Harry's offered you the command of a starship.”

“That's not going to happen,” Kirk said.

“Sorry,” Antonia said, “but your promises don't carry a lot of weight with me anymore.”

“It doesn't have to be like this,” Kirk said, walking toward her, wanting very much to find a way to ease Antonia's pain. “We can…” The notion of marriage had actually risen in his mind, though he refrained from saying so on the off chance that she might accept.

“We can what?” Antonia asked. “Get married? That's just a label if there's no promise to back it up.” She looked down at the robe in her hand for a moment, then threw it back down on the floor and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Kirk asked.

“I'm leaving,” she said from the doorway. “Don't come after me, don't try to see me, don't try to contact me.” She thought for a second and then added, “I'll move my things out of the house when you're away during the day at Starfleet.” She said nothing more, but she also didn't turn and walk away. She stared at him, and Kirk realized that, amidst her hurt and disappointment, some part of her wanted him to protest, to do something that would keep them together. At that instant, Kirk understood that there were things that he could say to Antonia that would begin to put this incident behind them, that would indeed save their relationship.

He said none of those things. Instead, he told her simply, “I'm sorry it has to be like this.”

“You should be,” Antonia said quietly, seeming to deflate before his eyes. Then she turned, took two steps, and started down the stairs. Kirk listened to her footfalls, then heard the front door open and close.

He felt terrible for what he had done, but there had been no choice in the matter. His mistake hadn't been in returning to Starfleet, but in getting involved so seriously with Antonia in the first place. He had lost sight of the fact that true love had already passed him by and that it would not come his way again. For that, Antonia had paid a hard price.

Kirk never saw her again.

2293

Even as the airpod skimmed evenly past fields that looked as though they had until recently been filled with wheat, Scotty sat at an auxiliary panel, checking engine performance.
Habits become nature,
Jim Kirk thought, recollecting the old Chinese proverb. As though he needed additional proof of the maxim, Chekov sat to his right at the forward console, working the navigational controls. “I thought you were waiting for an
exec
position to open up,” Kirk said, looking at Pavel. Then he pointed over at Scotty and added, “And I thought you
retired
from engineering.”

“Ach,” Scotty scoffed in his Gaelic way. “I retired from Starfleet. I'll
always
be an engineer.”

“What was I thinking?” Kirk said with a smile. It surprised him how good it felt to be with his two old friends. When he'd made the decision to leave the space service, he'd believed that the time had been right. The
Enterprise
had been decommissioned, many of his command crew had been ready to go their separate ways, and politics had more than ever insinuated itself into his job, but he'd also felt that he'd needed, in some regard, to get on with his life.

That hadn't been the first time that Kirk had reached such a point. He'd stepped away from Starfleet once before, retreated to his property in Idaho, and ended up becoming involved with Antonia for two years. He hadn't found whatever he'd needed at that time, but neither had he found it when he'd gone back to the service.

And so Kirk had decided to try again. After retiring this second time, he'd begun filling his days and nights with many of the activities that he hadn't had the opportunity to pursue over the years. Doing so had entailed journeying to various unique locations throughout the quadrant, and doing so as a civilian had proven different and interesting in and of itself.

Kirk had enjoyed all that he'd done during the past months, and he fully expected to feel the same about orbital skydiving today. After he'd learned that Scotty and Chekov would be joining him for the
Enterprise
-B launch tomorrow, he'd decided to invite them along today for his unusual exploit. They'd agreed to survey the landing site this morning, and they would greet him there later in the day for his touchdown.

Their presence in the airpod right now, and the satisfaction Kirk found in simply being with them, underscored how much time he'd spent alone since he'd begun his retirement. He had stayed by himself intentionally, believing that he needed to separate from his old life in order to determine how best to move on from here. But lost amid his frenetic schedule and the solitude he'd sought for self-reflection, he hadn't realized how much he missed his old friends.

He did now.

Kirk turned and peered out through the forward viewport. In the early morning light, a dirt path passed below the airpod, with freshly reaped fields slipping by on either side of the small craft. Ahead, he saw a slight rise, and atop it, a pair of tall stone markers. “Is that it?” he asked Chekov.

“I think so,” Pavel said, consulting a readout on his panel. “Yes, that should be the western perimeter of the landing zone.”

“Excellent,” Kirk said as the airpod began up the gentle slope. Chekov slowed the craft as they approached the markers, bringing it to a floating stop once they arrived there. “How large is it?” Kirk asked.

“Approximately two kilometers square,” Chekov read from his instruments.

Kirk nodded. “Why don't you take us to the center of the area?” Chekov operated his controls, and a short time later, he once more brought the craft to a stop, this time setting it down in the panic grass. Kirk stood up, leaned on the console, and peered out left, center, and right. “Doesn't really look like much, does it?” he said.

“I don't suppose it has to,” Chekov said, standing up beside him and gazing out.

“It wouldn't make a bit of difference if this field was made out of Kerlovian foam or cast rodinium,” Scotty said, suddenly appearing between Kirk and Chekov. “If you don't execute reentry just right, either one would leave you a puddle of flesh.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Kirk said. “Now I know how you motivated your engineering teams all these years.”

“Don't blame me,” Scotty said. “You're the one running a bloody decathlon across the galaxy.”

“‘A ship in harbor is safe,'” Kirk quoted, “‘but that is not what ships are built for.'” He paused, then dryly asked, “Are you sure you don't want to make a jump yourself?”

“The only jump I plan on making,” Scotty said, “is into my boat once I reach the Norpin Colony.”

“He says that now,” Chekov cracked, “but I bet less than a week after he arrives there, he'll be working on the colony's generators or power grid or transporters.”

Scotty looked at Pavel with an expression that seemed to indicate that he'd taken offense at the comment, but then he said, “Only if the equipment needs it.” Without waiting for a response, he turned and opened the airpod's hatch. Kirk glanced over at Chekov, who smiled in obvious amusement at Scotty's remark.

After the engineer had exited, Chekov and then Kirk followed him outside. The clean, slightly sweet scent of wheat filled the air, the aroma at once calling to mind his childhood. He didn't fight to suppress the memories, as he so often did, but let them settle within him. “When I was a boy,” he said, “the air in certain areas around town would smell like this.” He breathed in deeply, and the three men stood quietly for a few seconds, taking in their surroundings. Finally, Chekov pointed off to one side.

“There,” he said. He walked ten meters, then squatted and waved away some of the panic grass, uncovering a squat cylinder that rose about half a meter from the ground. “This is your homing beacon.”

Kirk walked over and examined the device, which appeared well anchored in the ground. He strolled around it, then leaned down when he saw a small access panel on one side. He pushed it and it glided open, revealing a thumbprint scanner, a single control, and a small display. Kirk placed his thumb on the pad and a ray of light immediately shined across it. Almost at once, the words
ORBITAL SKYDIVER
—
IDENTITY CONFIRMED
appeared on the display, and the control came to life with a red glow. As he'd been instructed when he'd signed up for his jump, Kirk pressed the button. The readout blinked and read
PERFORMING DIAGNOSTIC
. He waited until the color of the control changed from red to green, indicating the functional status of the homing beacon. The display also confirmed the successful completion of the diagnostic.

“All set,” he said, swinging the access plate closed and standing back up. Chekov rose as well.

“That's it?” Scotty blustered. “You really ought to let me have a look at that equipment.”

“And how long would that take?” Kirk asked, playing along with the engineer.

“I could have it running at maximum efficiency in six hours,” he said.

“It's a miracle that we could ever plan on the
Enterprise
making it from one planet to another in less than a year,” Chekov gibed.

“Engineers,” Kirk said with a shrug. “Just wait until you make captain and have a chief engineer of your own, Pavel.”

“Do you think they'll let me do without one?” Chekov joked.

“Somebody's got to be aboard to keep you command types from blowing up the ship every five minutes,” Scotty said in mock indignation.

“Well, that's true,” Chekov said. “At least in your case, Captain.”

“Now, now,” Kirk said. “I only destroyed the
Enterprise
once.”

“Not for want of trying to do it more often,” Scotty said. “There was the time when the Kelvans hijacked the ship when you ordered me to rig the ship to explode on your order.”

“There was also the time when Bele and Lokai came aboard,” Chekov said.

“And then there was the time—” Scotty began, but Kirk interrupted him.

“All right, all right, I give,” he said, holding up his hands before himself in a pose of surrender. “Well, I guess I should be on my way to Tunis.” Together, they all started back to the airpod, and Chekov flew them back into Wichita.

When they'd returned to the public transporter at which they'd all arrived earlier, Kirk said, “So I'll see you gentlemen out at the landing zone this afternoon?”

“Four forty-nine,” Chekov confirmed. “We'll be there.”

“Good,” Kirk said. “I'll see you then.”

Chekov beamed away first, heading back to San Francisco, and then Scotty transported out to Aberdeen, Scotland, where he'd been living since beginning his own retirement. As Kirk stepped up onto the platform, he thought again about how much he'd enjoyed seeing his old friends. As much as he'd been anticipating his orbital skydive today, he now thought that he looked forward even more to the dinner that he and Scotty and Pavel had planned on having together this evening.

After I get back from the
Enterprise
launch tomorrow,
Kirk thought,
I'm going to contact Spock and Bones.
McCoy had actually reached him last week, but Kirk hadn't really said much, other than to tell his friend about agreeing to participate in the
Enterprise
-B ceremony.
That's got to change,
Kirk thought. He realized that he really needed to reconnect with his friends.

At the console across the room, the transporter operator signaled his readiness, and Kirk nodded in reply. The operator worked his controls, and the hum of the transporter grew, bringing with it the blue-white light of dematerialization. Moments later, Kirk was not in Kansas anymore.

Kirk set down the carryall in the den of his counterpart's San Francisco apartment, then squatted down and hunted through it until he found the blue data card he'd brought back with him from his days in Idaho. He took it to the computer terminal, where he sat down and inserted it into an input/output receptacle. He wanted to review one last time the message he'd recorded, since once he left here today, he wouldn't have an opportunity to safely do so again.

On the display, his own face appeared.
“Jim,”
the message began, and as he implored the earlier version of himself to listen to the entire recording before taking any action, the strangeness of the situation struck Kirk. He had traveled in time before, but never had it resulted in such peculiar circumstances as these.
It did once for Spock, though,
he thought, remembering when his friend and first officer had leaped into his own childhood in order to save himself as a boy.

“I am you, but at a future date,”
his message continued.
“To make and leave you this recording, I arrived here through the Guardian of Forever. Because I am you, I know what the mere mention of the Guardian does to you, even after all these years.”
Kirk knew that mentioning the time vortex in that way would have an impact on his alter ego.

When he'd finished watching the complete message and found himself satisfied with it, Kirk removed the data card and set it aside. He then accessed the Earth comnet and opened a transmission. After a few seconds, the Starfleet emblem faded in on the empty screen, replaced in the next moment by the face of Admiral Sinclair-Alexander's assistant.
“Captain Kirk,”
the young ensign said.
“May I help you with something?”

“I'd like to speak with the admiral,” he said.

“Admiral Sinclair-Alexander is in a meeting and therefore unavailable at the moment,”
the ensign said. Kirk could not recall her name.
“May I ask what this is in regard to?”

“The launch of the
Enterprise
tomorrow,” he said, aware that when Sinclair-Alexander heard why he had contacted her, she would be concerned that he had changed his mind about attending the ceremony. Kirk remembered that when she had invited him in the first place, he had not particularly wanted to do as she'd asked.

“Is there anything that I can help you with?”
the ensign wanted to know.

“No, thank you,” Kirk said. “I really would like to discuss this with the admiral. The sooner, the better.”

“Very well,”
the ensign said.
“I'll inform her as soon as she's out of her meeting.”

“Pardon me,” Kirk said, “but do you have any idea when that will be?”

The ensign glanced away from the screen for a moment, doubtless consulting a chronometer.
“In just a few minutes,”
she said.

“Then if it's all right with you, Ensign,” Kirk said, “I'd like to wait.”