Crucible: Kirk (3 page)

According to Picard, after Soran had been beamed from the transport, and consequently from the nexus, he had then spent the ensuing decades searching for a safe means of reentering it. The energy ribbon, which made a circuit through the galaxy every thirty-nine years, functioned as a doorway into the nexus. Soran had developed a scheme to reroute the path of the ribbon so that it would intersect the surface of a world—this world, Veridian Three. In order to accomplish that, he had deployed a trilithium weapon of his own design to collapse a star, Amargosa, thereby affecting the gravity in this sector. Now, he intended to do the same thing to this system's star. After Soran had then made it back into the nexus, the shock wave resulting from the destruction of Veridian would tear apart each of its six planets, including the fourth, home to a preindustrial society numbering two hundred thirty million.

“Soran has covered these crags with a complex of platforms, bridges, and ladders,” Picard said. “It appears that he'll launch his trilithium missile, then make his way to the highest platform to wait for the ribbon to sweep him up into the nexus.”

“How much time have we got?” Kirk asked.

“Minutes only,” Picard said.

“Then let's go.”

Kirk threw his closed fist through the scaffolding, catching Soran on the side of his face. The white-haired man fell backward and off the top of the rocks, fifty meters or more above the ground. Kirk heard him grunt once, but Soran did not scream.

As quickly as he could, Kirk extricated himself from the web of metal bars that held up the platform at the apex of the rock formation. As he did, he saw Picard clambering back up from where he'd tumbled during their hand-to-hand struggle with Soran. “I thought you were going for the launcher,” Kirk said to him. In fact, by returning when he had, Picard had prevented Kirk's death at the emitter end of Soran's handheld energy weapon.

“I changed my mind,” Picard said. “Captain's prerogative.” Together, they started back down from the summit, heading for the trilithium missile that sat poised to take flight. As they reached that level and approached the launcher, though, Kirk heard a low whooshing sound from ahead, and he looked over to see the bronze missile fade into nothingness, obviously cloaking. More important, the launcher and its control panel also vanished.

Suddenly, Kirk heard another noise, above and to his left. He peered over and saw Soran falling down the side of the cliff face at the end of a rope, which he'd evidently grabbed hold of when he'd fallen. Now, he slid down fifteen meters, then jerked to a stop. A small object flew from his hands, clattered along the rocks, and landed atop one of the metal bridges constructed here.

“We need that control pad,” Picard said, clearly concluding that Soran had used it to cloak the missile. They started for the device at once, Kirk in the lead. As he reached the bridge, though, Picard said, “Captain, look!” Kirk glanced up and immediately saw the source of Picard's concern. “Where's Soran?” Against the sheer rock face, the rope now hung empty. Either Soran had fallen or he'd found his way to safety.

It didn't matter. With time running out, they had little choice in how to proceed. Kirk turned and pointed back toward the location of the missile. Picard nodded and started for it, while Kirk hurried across the bridge toward the control pad.

Suddenly a pulse of green light flashed from below. It passed beneath the bridge, and Kirk turned to see it strike the rocks behind him, creating a momentary fireball. Before he could do anything, Soran corrected his aim and sent a pair of energy bursts slamming into the center of the bridge in front of Kirk. He felt the blasts as they rent the metal structure in two. Kirk reached for a pole at the side of the bridge, wrapping one arm around it as the surface beneath his feet fell. Both ends of the bridge remained attached to the rocks, though, depending from them at steep angles.

Expecting another blast from Soran's energy weapon at any moment, Kirk didn't wait, but began pulling himself up along the chains that hung between the poles at the sides of the bridge. As he did so, he saw Picard rushing back down from the missile platform, obviously to help him. Kirk pulled his knees in and used his feet to push himself upward from one of the poles. Above, he saw Picard positioning himself at the end of the bridge and preparing to reach down to him. Kirk took hold of the upper chain with his left hand and maneuvered himself onto his back, then reached his right hand up toward Picard.

Only centimeters separated their fingertips, but it might as well have been parsecs. Kirk strained, as did Picard, and the gap narrowed, but not enough. At the same time, he felt his hold on the chain slipping.

A terrifying instant later his hand came completely free. Kirk began sliding down the bridge. “No!” he yelled, elongating the word as he descended toward a fall that would likely kill him.

But then Picard's hand slapped down hard atop his wrist, the captain's fingers closing around it in a strong grip. Kirk reached again for one of the chains, found it, and began hauling himself up again. With Picard's help, this time he made it.

The two captains dropped onto the rocks at the end of the bridge, Picard no doubt as hot and exhausted as Kirk. The twenty-fourth-century captain peered down to the location from where Soran had fired his weapon, and then up at the sky. Kirk followed his gaze and saw a whirling, weaving band of fiery energy he remembered well from the main viewscreen on the bridge of the
Enterprise
-B. He'd also seen it up close, when it had torn through the outer bulkhead of the deflector control room. Kirk had been ascending a ladder when he'd been blown out into space amid a coruscation of brilliant light. As though through a fog, he'd seen for just a moment the massive form of the
Enterprise
above him, and beyond it, the pinpoints of the brightest stars, Sol among them.

And then he'd been with Edith on Earth in 1930. And with Gary on Delta Vega, with Sam on Deneva, with David on Regula, with Spock down in main engineering. He'd prevented Governor Kodos from giving the order to execute four thousand colonists on Tarsus IV, had avoided contracting the rapid-aging disease on Miri's planet, had reached the
S.S. Huron
before it had been attacked by Orion pirates. He'd spent time with Carol and Ruth, Areel Shaw and Janice Lester. He'd served under Captain Bannock aboard the
Republic
and under Captain Garrovick aboard the
Farragut.
He'd interacted with different people, visited a myriad of places, experienced events both old and new to him…dozens of times, hundreds,
thousands.

“We're running out of time,” Picard said in an odd counterpoint to the apparent wealth of time that had crashed in on Kirk. “Look,” Picard said, peering back toward the splintered bridge. “The control pad. It's still on the other side.”

Kirk saw it, wedged against a post support on the far half of the bridge. “I'll get it,” he said, knowing that Picard would be better suited to disarming the missile with its twenty-fourth-century controls. “You go for the launcher.”

“No, you'll never make that by yourself,” Picard said, and then he gazed at Kirk. “We have to work together.”

“We
are
working together,” Kirk told him. “Trust me. Go.”

Picard followed his direction without further protest, getting to his feet and heading for the missile platform. “Good luck, Captain,” he said.

“Call me Jim,” Kirk said as he stood and started back down the bridge. He took hold of the upper chain on the left side and made his way along the grated surface, which now hung down at nearly a forty-five-degree angle. As he moved, so too did the bridge, shaking and shimmying beneath his weight, its connections to the rocks strained. The stressed metal groaned as it shifted, and small pieces fell off and rattled to the bottom of the chasm below.

Two-thirds of the way down, the chain in his hands snapped. Kirk fell onto his side and skidded down the bridge toward where its charred, broken metal surface ended in midair. He reached for another chain and found it just in time.

Cautiously, he pulled himself up to a standing position, as close to the wrecked edge of the bridge as possible. He peered across the meters-wide gap and saw the other section moving too, appearing as though it could fall at any moment. He had no idea if it would bear up under his weight, particularly after a jump, but he had not come this far to play it safe. As he gazed at Soran's lost control pad, Kirk knew that he must risk his life to do this, for if he didn't, he would condemn the two hundred thirty million inhabitants of Veridian IV to certain death. He bent his knees in preparation, took a deep breath, and leaped.

He landed hard on the other side. He wrapped the fingers of one hand around another chain, while he sent those of his other hand through the grated surface to take hold there. That section of the bridge shook even more, and then Kirk heard the snap and creak of metal parts. The surface dropped to an even steeper angle, and he quickly let go of the chain and slammed that hand through the grating as well.

Above him, he heard a clatter, and he looked up just in time to see Soran's control pad falling toward him. Letting go of the bridge with one hand, he managed to catch the device. He examined it for a moment, then pointed it toward the cloaked missile. Over the shriek of failing metal, he pushed a button. In the distance, he saw Soran's trilithium weapon reappear on its platform, even as Picard raced up the ladder to it.

Not wanting to give up possession of the control pad, Kirk tucked it into his waistband. Then he reached again for the chain, intending to try and pull himself up to the rocks. Above him, he heard the report of metal splitting, and he knew he didn't have long to get to safety.

That was when the bridge fell.

Kirk held on tightly as it careered down the rocks. Metal ground against stone, and then the bottom edge of the bridge struck an outcropping, which sent Kirk and the entire structure spinning into open air. He felt instant, blinding fear in a way he rarely had. He didn't open his mouth, but in his mind, he screamed.

Seconds later, he crashed to the ground beneath the twisted mass of metal.

Kirk didn't know how much time had passed or whether he'd remained conscious throughout, but he became aware of the scrabble of footsteps in the dirt. He attempted to move, but he could not sustain the effort for more than a moment. The wreckage of the bridge had pinned him on his back, but even had it not been there, Kirk doubted that he would've been able to stir. Though he felt nothing, he knew that he'd been crushed, that within him, his organs had been damaged beyond repair. He could still see and hear, and the sharp taste of iron filled his mouth, but he could do little else but wait to die.

He heard more movement in the dirt, and then seemingly in the metal ruins about him. A bar shifted then, and a chain, rattling away from him. Then, filling that space, Picard leaned in and peered at him.

Kirk blinked, once, twice, trying to make sure of what he saw. “Did we do it?” he asked, the whisper of his own voice barely audible even to him. “Did…we make a difference?”

“Oh, yes. We made a difference,” Picard told him earnestly. “Thank you.”

“Least I could do,” Kirk managed to say, “for the captain of the
Enterprise.”
He looked away from Picard and into the past, to his successes, to his failures, and he found that it pleased him a great deal that his death would be in the service of saving others—beings he hadn't met and who would never know of his sacrifice. “It was…fun,” he said, feeling the sides of his mouth curling upward in a faint smile.

He gazed back at Picard, and then past him. In the patch of sky visible over his right shoulder, Kirk saw heading rapidly toward them the winding, thrashing energy ribbon—but not
just
the energy ribbon. All about it, the sky fractured soundlessly, space-time ripping apart in mute devastation. “Oh, my,” Kirk said as the black wave of destruction cleaving to the ribbon expanded in all directions, up toward space and down to encompass the planet's surface. In the blink of an eye, the earth and the air shattered in the distance, annihilated in some fundamental, irrevocable way.

At last the sound came, a rumble sonorous and dark, like the voice of death itself. Picard spun toward it as the ground beneath them began to quake. Like a tsunami, the ribbon and the dark maelstrom reached far above them, a vast imposing threat from which there clearly could be no escape.

The rumble increased to a roar, the ground shaking intensely. And then all of it descended upon them. The structure of existence in that moment, in that space, disintegrated. Kirk saw a coruscation of brilliant light and then—

Reality ceased to exist.

Many Things I Thought of Then