Crucible: Kirk (2 page)

Picard looked at him, and Kirk could see that the future captain of the
Enterprise
actually understood. “Not this time,” Kirk told him, and he started back over to the steps and then to ascend them. “This time, I'm going to walk up these stairs and march into that bedroom and tell Antonia I want to marry her.” When he reached the second floor, he balanced the tray against the jamb, took hold of the knob, and threw the bedroom door open wide. “This time,” he said, determined, “it's going to be different.”

Inside, Antonia looked up at him from where she still lay in bed, her long hair spread out on the pillow behind her head, the dark strands contrasting the white fabric. She gave him a wide smile, and he returned it. He glanced back at the door for a moment as he pushed it closed with his foot, then turned back to see—

Not the master bedroom of his vacation home, but a barn. For a moment, he felt disoriented. Horses whickered and the dry, earthy scent of hay filled the air. The tray now gone from his hands, Kirk peered behind him, but the doorway through which he'd just come—through which he
thought
he'd just come—had gone too. He didn't know what had happened, but as he looked around, he recognized his location. Not only that, he also thought he knew
when
he was.
This time it's going to be different,
he'd said, and maybe now, he could ensure that from the beginning. With his own thoughts and hopes, he realized, he had chosen to come to this place, to this time.

Kirk moved to his left, deeper into the barn. By turns disconcerted and thrilled at this new setting, he gazed all around. As he did, he saw that Picard had again come after him.

“This is not your bedroom,” the captain said.

“No, it's not,” Kirk said. “It's better.”

“Better?”

“This is my uncle's barn in Idaho,” Kirk said. He had always thought of the place in that way, even long after his father's brother had died and passed the property on to him. “I took this horse out for a ride eleven years ago,” he said, walking over to the already saddled beast he had called Tom Telegraph. “On a spring day,” he said. He moved to the nearest door, lifted its wooden latch, pushed it open, and gazed out into the sunshine. “Like this one,” he said. “If I'm right, this is the day I met Antonia.” He looked back over at Picard. “This nexus of yours, very clever. I can start all over again and do things right from day one.” This time, he thought, he would not be left with an empty house. Without another word, he crossed back to Tom Telegraph, mounted his saddle, and rode him outside.

He recalled where he'd met Antonia, up on the crest of a hill out past the ravine he'd so often jumped. Breaking the horse into a gallop, he headed across the open countryside in that direction. The rays of the midmorning sun warmed Kirk's face, the steady beat of Tom Telegraph's hooves accompanied by the whisper of the switchgrass through which they moved. It had been a long time
—too
long—since Kirk had ridden, and it felt good to be doing it again.

I know how real this must seem to you,
Picard had said,
but it's not.
And Kirk knew the truth of that. He hadn't gone back to the day he'd met Antonia, only to some remarkable simulacrum of it. But with a great sense of liberation, he also thought that might be enough for him. He remembered Christopher Pike, the man he'd succeeded to command of the
Enterprise.
A strong, vital man, Fleet Captain Pike had been horribly mutilated when during an inspection tour of an old cadet vessel, a baffle plate had ruptured. Pike had saved numerous lives, hauling one young officer after another from the delta rays inundating the affected area, but in the process had condemned himself to life in an automated wheelchair, unable to do anything but move slowly about and signal “yes” and “no” in response to questions. But then Spock had taken his old captain back to the forbidden world of Talos IV, where the powerful mental abilities of the small population there had then allowed Pike to live an illusory life of the mind, apparently happily. Why couldn't Kirk do the same here in the nexus? Why
shouldn't
he?

Kirk directed Tom Telegraph into a moderately wooded area. Amid trees and bushes, he pushed the horse toward the hill, and before it, to the ravine. They picked up speed as they approached the meters-wide chasm. Kirk loosened the reins, leaned forward out of the saddle, and grabbed hold of Tom Telegraph's mane.

At the ravine, the horse leaped up and forward. He crossed the gap in the earth and landed in stride. Up ahead the hill rose to its crown—

Something's wrong,
Kirk thought. He swung the horse around and to a halt, peering back at the ravine. Tom Telegraph had cleared the dangerous natural obstacle with no trouble, with apparent ease, even. Kirk hadn't been concerned for a second.

But I should've been,
he thought.

Kirk spurred the horse on again, back toward the ravine. Again he prepared for the jump, and again Tom Telegraph soared into the air and across the open space. They landed, and once more Kirk stopped the horse and faced back in the direction of the chasm.

Behind him, he heard the approach of hoofbeats. He waited as Picard rode up, coming to a halt a few meters to his left. Kirk looked over at him, then pointed toward the ravine. “I must've jumped that fifty times,” he said. “Scared the hell out of me each time.” And then he revealed the uncomfortable truth: “Except this time. Because it isn't real.”

Kirk fell silent, the superficiality of this faux existence weighing heavily on him. In the distance, a horse whinnied, and he looked up to the hilltop for which he'd been headed. “Antonia,” Picard said.

Antonia,
Kirk thought as he saw her sitting tall astride her own horse.
Romeo,
Kirk recalled the beast's name, and then: Not
Romeo. And
not
Antonia.
“She isn't real either, is she?” he said. “Nothing here is. Nothing here matters.”

Kirk walked Tom Telegraph toward Picard and his horse and started to circle around them. “You know, maybe this isn't about an empty house,” he said, even as he knew that it was. But he couldn't do anything about that, could he? He had cleared out his house by choice, for the good of the many. He could not undo that. On the other hand, he could help Picard attempt to save millions of lives. “Maybe it's about that empty chair on the bridge of the
Enterprise.
Ever since I left Starfleet, I haven't made a difference.” Kirk finished going around Picard, coming to a stop a couple of meters to his side.

He thought for a moment. He had left Starfleet for several reasons, but largely because of that empty house. If he couldn't fill it, if he couldn't change his life in the way that he wanted to change it—and his time away from the space service suggested that he couldn't—then didn't he have a responsibility, to himself as much as to others, to return to the duty and obligation of which he and Picard had spoken?

Slowly, he stepped Tom Telegraph to the side, until he stood next to Picard's horse. “Captain of the
Enterprise?”
Kirk asked.

“That's right,” Picard said.

“Close to retirement?”

“I'm not planning on it,” Picard said.

“Let me tell you something: don't,” Kirk said, recollecting his own mistakes and seeing in Picard a kindred spirit. “Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there, you can make a difference.”

“Come back with me,” Picard said. “Help me stop Soran. Make a difference again.”

Kirk had already decided that he would. He could not stay here in this place, in this time, or in any place or any time that the nexus offered. He had already stayed far too long. No matter how many events he relived here, no matter how many mistakes he rectified, none of it would truly matter to his life.

He took Tom Telegraph in front of Picard's horse so that Kirk could face the captain directly. “Who am I to argue with the captain of the
Enterprise,”
he said with a grin. “What's the name of that planet, Veridian Three?”

“Yes.”

“I take it the odds are against us and the situation is grim,” Kirk said, warming to the idea of taking on this challenge.

“You could say that,” Picard agreed.

How many times had Kirk rushed into a burning building? As many times as he had made it safely back out, save once: he had gone down to the primary deflector control center aboard the
Excelsior
-class
Enterprise,
had apparently succeeded in saving the ship, but he hadn't returned. Now, finally, he would—and he would storm right back into another burning building. “You know, if Spock were here, he'd say that I was an irrational, illogical human being for taking on a mission like that,” he said. “Sounds like fun.”

Picard smiled, then turned his horse and started back the way he'd come. Kirk peered up at the top of the hill one last time, at the imitation of Antonia, and he knew that he'd made the right choice. He went after Picard, having no idea how the captain intended to get them to Veridian Three.

As they trotted forward, though, Kirk saw a brilliant white light suddenly blossom, as though emerging from the fabric of existence around them. The gauzy blue of the sky, the green of the trees, the flaxen hue of the switchgrass, all bled and faded. The field of white grew to envelop Picard and his horse, then engulfed Kirk and Tom Telegraph as well. For a subjectively immeasurable span of time, he could see nothing, could hear nothing, could sense nothing. Even the feel of his own body vanished, as though he existed only as thought. He wanted to run but had no legs, wanted to scream but had no voice—

And then with dizzying swiftness, the force of gravity held Kirk. Light shades of brown formed before his eyes, and a hot, dry wind brushed the flesh of his face. He smelled the dust of the arid region, tasted the grit of the air. The rapid change of place unsettled him.

He took a moment to steady himself, no longer on horseback now but on foot, and then suddenly an explosion boomed not far behind him. He turned from the sandstone wall he had been facing to see a cloud of dust rising before a stone ridge twenty-five meters away. Debris showered down upon the rocky topography like rain. Kirk thought he saw motion at the base of the cloud, a quick flash of red and black, but it seemed to disappear behind an outcropping.

He stepped forward, thinking he knew the source of the movement, but then through the daylight shrieked two bright green pulses, the discharge of an energy weapon. Kirk threw himself backward as the shots pounded into the same stone ridge where the previous explosion had taken place. A huge force field blinked orange above the area as another cloud of dust went up and a huge slab of rock tumbled side-over-side to the ground.

As more rubble peppered the area, Kirk waited. The source of the blasts remained hidden from view around the rocky mountain by which he stood. Seconds passed, and then a minute. He surveyed the ragged terrain, strewn with rocks and boulders, cut with fissures and grooves. When he saw and heard nothing, he prepared to move, to try to find Picard or this Soran of whom the captain had spoken. But then a hand appeared on the edge of a crevice that ran across the landscape in front of Kirk. He stepped up to it and peered down to see Picard climbing upward. They made eye contact, and Kirk lowered himself to his knees and helped the captain up.

“I take it that was Soran firing at you,” Kirk said.

“It was,” Picard confirmed. “He's got that handheld weapon, but he's alone here. If we go at him from two sides, one of us should be able to stop him.” As Picard gazed in the direction from which the energy fire had come, he explained that Soran had briefly experienced the nexus himself eighty years ago, aboard one of the very transports that the skeleton crew of the
Excelsior
-class
Enterprise
had endeavored to save. Prior to that, Soran had lost his entire family in an unprovoked attack by a brutal alien species, and apparently the nexus had allowed him to overcome the pain of that terrible loss, at least while he'd been within it. Having been swallowed up himself by the timeless other-space and subjected to its effects, Kirk found that eminently understandable.