Star Trek: The Original Series - 162 - Shadow of the Machine (5 page)

Chapter 5

IOWA

James Kirk unpacked the small collection of clothes from his bag, washed, and then padded silently down the stairs to grab some coffee.

Much to his surprise, Hanna was waiting for him in the kitchen at the end of the hall, a freshly brewed pot of coffee sitting on the countertop.

The table sat in the open floor space to one side of the kitchen, with five mismatched chairs pushed around it. One had been pulled out just a little, indicating that Kirk should just go right ahead and sit himself down.

“You’ll have to excuse us; it’s not often we sit down together at breakfast,” Hanna explained. “But I thought I’d wait for you before I start my day.”

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t think anyone would be here,” Kirk said.

Hanna glanced across at the kitchen clock; it was just a little shy of quarter past nine. “Your uncle Abner was up and out of here an hour before you arrived. They’ve been threatening a storm for the last few days, so Abner wants to get the lightning shield up and working again, just in case.”

His aunt finished off the last of the dishes, then dried her hands on a towel that hung on a brass hook by the stove. With her kitchen chores done, she crossed to the counter and poured two cups of fresh coffee, setting one down in front of Kirk.

“You look like you could use one of these,” Hanna said with a wink as she settled herself into a chair opposite. “Maybe I’ll sit and join you for a few minutes, although don’t tell Abner or he’ll say I’m slacking.”

“My lips are sealed,” Kirk promised.

The coffee was good and just how he remembered it: hot and black, with the faintest hint of chicory. Some things never change.

He felt the rising urge to flee, the need to be away from here, to be safely aboard a shuttle and on his way back to the
Enterprise
. Kirk took a couple of good, deep breaths and kept a lid on it.

“I know that letter coming out of the blue was probably the last thing you needed right now, what with you just getting your ship back, and . . .”

Kirk looked across the table at his aunt; she was frowning down at the table, seemingly distracted by the coffee cup that she was twisting in her hands. Kirk said nothing. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what to say to her, but he knew that if he gave her enough time she’d get to her point.

“Abner and I didn’t know what else to do. Your folks never had any problems like this when you and George were boys.” Hanna glanced up, the frown straightening out a little. “Your minds were made up long before either of you had reached Peter’s age.”

“For Sam,” Kirk said, “it was always the Academy, no question.”

“Do you remember the first time he came home in his cadet uniform?” Hanna asked.

Kirk nodded. “He asked me if he looked like a famous explorer.”

“Your mother was so proud, she took a hundred pictures of him standing out there in the front yard,” Hanna said. “Sent them to everyone she knew. He cut a handsome figure.”

“Knowing that he’d graduate from the Academy, that he’d be out there . . .” Kirk stopped, finding it hard to go on.

“And you?” Hanna asked him.

Kirk shook his head wearily. “I wanted to go to the Academy. I wanted to join Starfleet, serve aboard a starship, command my own vessel, but . . .” He thought about it, then shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. Sam and I felt things very differently. When we were growing up, Sam always knew the things he was going to do, knew they were going to happen for him.”

“If Peter had a fraction of that Kirk confidence, then we wouldn’t need you here, Jimmy,” Hanna said.

“Peter’s inherited many fine qualities from his father,” Kirk pointed out.

“And what about your boy?” Hanna asked. “What qualities has he inherited from his father?”

Kirk shifted uncomfortably in his seat, taking a thoughtful sip of coffee before answering. “You’d have to ask Carol about that. I’ve not seen David since they left for the New Berlin colony.”

“She’s not letting you see him?” Hanna asked.

“No, it’s not . . .” Kirk shook his head.

“Jim . . .”

“It’s probably for the best,” Kirk told her. “Starship captains do not make good fathers. My home has always been up there.” He jerked his head toward the sky.

“You’ve got command of the
Enterprise
again. Must be a comfort,” Hanna said.

Kirk dropped his eyes, silently staring at the last dregs of coffee swilling around the bottom of his cup. At long last, he said, “What makes you so sure that I can get through to Peter?”

“You’re the one Peter went to when he had a bee in his bonnet about something, even when his mom and dad were alive. I dunno what you’d care to call it.” Hanna spread her hands out, palms up, knowing how uncomfortable her nephew would be with the sentiment.

“Hero worship?” Kirk said.

“You were there when his parents were killed, your ship was the one that saved him, the
Enterprise
carried his parents’ bodies home. Maybe that affected Peter more than we realize.”

Kirk nodded in understanding. Deep down the thought troubled him greatly. He’d already made a complete mess of it with his own son; he didn’t want to make it two-for-two with Peter. But if Abner and Hanna felt that he would have better luck getting through to Peter, then who was he to argue?

He pushed his chair back and made for the kitchen door, placing his empty cup in the sink as he passed. Before he could reach for the screen-door handle, Hanna called out, “Jimmy?”

When Kirk turned toward his aunt, she was already up on her feet and heading over to him. Grasping him by the shoulders, she looked up into his eyes.

“Why are you still in Starfleet?” she asked him.

The question took Kirk by surprise. “What?”

“Don’t you try to lie to me, James Tiberius Kirk. Whenever you had a problem at home, who’d you come to?”

Just for a second Kirk felt like a young boy again, the seven-year-old Jimmy Kirk.

“I know you. I can see you are troubled, and your response to my letter . . . not my Jimmy. What’s wrong?” Hanna asked.

“I love serving in Starfleet. I’m a good starship commander. I’m just not sure that I can be trusted with so many lives.”

V’GER

Despite the chaos, the endless, swirling patterns of color are hypnotic.

To Sulu’s left the navigator screams as a bank of relay controls explodes outward, showering them with red-hot shards. It sounds like Ilia, but that’s impossible because Ilia is already dead, killed by the column of blinding white light, the V’Ger probe.

Sulu tries to turn his head, to see if she’s hurt, but he can’t tear his eyes away from the forward viewscreen.

The alien is immense, unstoppable, gathering itself before them like some gigantic storm cloud, preparing to unleash its destructive energy upon them.

There is a cold flash of blue somewhere ahead, followed by another, then another, and three bolts of plasma energy race away from the center of the cloud toward the fleet of starships.

We are dying out here. We are all dying.

On the viewscreen the
Exeter
is on fire, spinning wildly out of control as a volley of ice-blue plasma energy bolts slams into its hull, cracking the reinforced skin of the ship like an egg.

As he watches, the
Constellation
moves in, trying to position itself between the dying starships and the alien cloud, attempting to deflect some of the disruptive energy bolts. But they are too powerful. It’s all in vain. The first bolt punches a hole through the saucer section, the second rips the starboard nacelle clean off its strut.

And now the immense cloud is turning, directing its attention elsewhere as it leaves the
Constellation
to die.

First it brings those unstoppable bolts to bear on the
Lexington
, tearing its saucer in half with a single, well-timed shot, then it moves on toward the
Yorktown
.

All of space is a graveyard, a vast, never-ending vista of twisted metal and frozen bodies.

That is when Sulu realizes that only the
Enterprise
is left.

The cloud turns again, causing the insanely beautiful patterns of blues and silvers and whites to dance once more.

But something is happening.

The thick covering of cloud starts to change color, racing violently through the vast spectrum of varying shades and hues until it finally settles upon a pale, almost colorless gray. Before Sulu’s eyes the outer shell begins to ripple, then to undulate, until, at last, it falls apart, peeling away like chunks of dead flesh.

There is only the machine left.

Black light crackles and sparks across its smooth, alien architecture as the machine begins to edge steadily forward, closing the distance between itself and the
Enterprise.

From behind him the captain orders full reverse, and Sulu reaches obediently forward for the controls.

But he is too late.

A circle of long, cylindrical spires slides silently out of the vast machine’s maw. Energy erupts across the length of its skin once more, followed by another series of blue flashes.

Four bolts of plasma energy explode from the tips of the cylindrical spires and race toward the
Enterprise
.

The first bolt strikes the ship just above engineering, tearing the entire aft section away from the saucer, causing her to go into a tailspin. The second and third bolts scream past, missing the spiraling ship by mere meters. The fourth bolt skims across the skin of the saucer section, ripping up the exterior panels as it goes, exposing the decks beneath to the harsh subzero temperatures of space.

And now the
Enterprise
is diving . . .

Down.

Down.

Down through the thin halo of Earth’s upper atmosphere, dragging a fiery tail behind it like some immense comet.

On the viewscreen San Francisco is in flames—his home, his family, his friends, all in ruins—destroyed by V’Ger’s orbital bombing. The Golden Gate Bridge is gone; nothing is left but twisted lumps of severed metal. The waters that separate the San Francisco and Marin Peninsulas are a writhing cauldron of smoke and vapor.

Sulu clings desperately to the arm of his chair as the ship begins to shake itself apart around him.

And above it all, the sound of someone screaming and screaming and screaming . . .

And Sulu suddenly realizes that it is him.

SAN FRANCISCO

At first he didn’t know where he was.

When Sulu snapped awake from the nightmare, the darkness was so unexpected, and so absolute, that it caused him to panic momentarily. He pulled himself quickly into a sitting position, clawing frantically at the bare boards beneath him.

The overhead lights sprang on, bathing the room in a soft, amber glow.

He was in San Francisco, Susan’s apartment.

He must have fallen asleep, and the computer had automatically cycled down the lights when it had detected no activity after forty minutes. He made a mental note to reset the autofunction.

Sulu wiped a shaking hand across his forehead and felt the cold sheen of sweat that coated his skin.

That was four nights in a row that he’d had that dream, and it was always the same.

No, that wasn’t strictly true.

It always
started
the same way, but this was the first time the
Enterprise
had been destroyed. Usually they were able to turn tail and run before V’Ger was able to fire its plasma energy bolts, but not this time, not tonight.

And that wasn’t the only thing that had been different: This time V’Ger had behaved differently.

Before it had just been a cloud that attacked the Federation fleet, but tonight it had revealed itself to him. Not the actual nucleus—the NASA spacecraft that had originally been known as
Voyager 6
—but the entire machine entity that the inhabitants of the Machine Planet had built around it: the thing that had
become
V’Ger.

He hated having this dream. It was one of the reasons he didn’t want to come back to the apartment.

One of many reasons.

It had taken him a few minutes to flag down a taxi outside the Starfleet Medical facility, but once aboard he’d fished out his Starfleet ID and fed it into the driver interface.

“Good evening, Lieutenant Commander Hikaru Sulu. Please state your destination.”

“1738 Ocean Avenue.” Sulu paused, before adding, “And take the scenic route.”

“Scenic route? Please clarify.”

Sulu sighed. “It means I’m not in any hurry to get there.”

The taxi driver was a machine and didn’t understand his intentions. It took the most direct route and dropped him outside the apartment building in a mere ten minutes.

He considered not going inside straightaway, perhaps going for a walk up toward Junipero, maybe even stopping off at a bar along the way. But it was starting to get cold and a tangle of fog was rolling in off the bay, so he thought better of it.

Sulu wasn’t convinced that he was going to get into the apartment at first. The security system’s retina scanner seemed to be acting up, and it took Sulu several attempts before the computer accepted his retinal print and opened the front door.

It was cold inside the apartment, and there was a faint whiff of lubrication wafting out of the air filters, making him think of the engineering section on board the
Enterprise.

There was something lying on the ground, just inside the door, causing Sulu to stumble and almost trip as he fumbled his way clumsily through the dark.

The computer, detecting his presence, activated the overhead lights, illuminating the length of the hallway and piping in a selection of calming music through the speakers.

“Music off!” Sulu ordered, snatching up Susan’s carelessly discarded shoes from the floor and tossing them into the hall closet.

Just like Susan
, Sulu thought with a smile. N
ever puts her shoes away in the closet.
No matter how many times he had asked her to.