IV
It wasn’t much of a room. More of an isolated loft. The imperfect accommodations did not matter to its sole occupant. With issues of much vaster import on his mind, he rarely paid attention to his surroundings. Any comfort he needed was found within himself. It had been intended that way from the beginning, though to look at him, no one could tell it was so. Off to one side, an antique music player was emitting the soothing sounds of a time gone by.
At the moment, he was engaged in drawing his own blood. Made to function painlessly, the extractor caused him no discomfort. It did not matter. He would have reacted with equal aplomb had it been necessary to hack off a finger and catch the resultant crimson flow in an ordinary glass. Such stoicism was his blessing. Such stoicism was his curse.
When a sufficient quantity of red liquid had been drawn, he disengaged the extractor. As it left his flesh, the device automatically sealed the entry it had made, leaving the man’s arm smooth and unmarred. From the extractor, he transferred the blood to a small glass vial. The man held it up to the light. There was nothing remarkable about its appearance . . . only its chemical composition.
Carefully, he slipped the vial inside a small rectangular box of polished wood. Into the opening beside the vial, he added a single ring of dull silvery metal. Though indicative of a division of Starfleet, the jewelry was not flashy or eye-catching. If anything, it was a bit on the bulky side, like the kind of rings that were commonly awarded for winning sports competitions. The owner of the vial and the ring smiled at his silent comparison. That there was no one present to see him smile did not trouble him at all. He knew the father of the sick little girl anxiously awaited the forthcoming gift. Expressions of mild amusement were for the benefit of the donor alone.
The bathroom was unchanged, but not its owner. The man staring into the mirror was scared. Tom Harewood had been terrified for a long time now, but for someone else. This was different. Not that it mattered. The end justifies the means, he kept telling himself over and over. Silly old trope. Nothing but a foolish juvenile meme. No less valid for all that, though.
The package had been delivered by private courier. He had half expected it never to arrive. In addition to a vial of blood, the dark-toned box contained a single ring. Harewood carefully switched it with the apparently identical silvery Starfleet Academy class ring he was already wearing. He was a bit surprised that the newly arrived metal loop fit perfectly. Given what he had managed to learn about the individual who had provided both vial and ring, he knew he should have expected nothing less.
A glance into the bedroom revealed the empty bed: its covers turned back, the spread rumpled. His wife was not there. She was at the hospital, keeping futile watch, waiting for a miracle without the slightest awareness that it was on its way. She would be expecting him, her daily relief in the ongoing tragedy that their lives had become, but not this early. He would surprise her.
Beyond the bedroom, a softly spoken word from the apartment’s owner caused a closet door to slide open. Inside were neat rows of casual clothing, shoes designed for various outings, and shirts reflecting their owner’s extensive travels. The far end was occupied by more formal wear. Each uniform was spotless and naturally sharp. Starfleet uniforms. Harewood selected the one he felt best reflected his mood and the deeds to be done.
In the final throes of her graveyard shift, the greeter at the hospital’s front desk barely acknowledged Harewood’s arrival. Like the rest of the hospital regulars, she now knew both him and his wife by sight. The fact that today he was clad in a Starfleet uniform as opposed to his usual civilian attire hardly registered on the sleepy attendant. She ran his ID without even looking at it, relying on the security processor to do its usual competent job.
Harewood found his wife sleeping in a chair not far from his daughter’s bed. As usual, there was no movement from the bed itself. Careful not to wake his wife, he worked his way through the tangle of conduits that now were all that kept his little girl from expiring.
From a pocket, he removed the vial. Moving to one of the nearby medical instruments, he placed it in an open receptacle and watched as it began to drain. A proximate transparent container filled with liquid holding vital nutrients and salts now began to add medication of a different kind, as blood from the vial began to diffuse into the otherwise clear fluid. From there, it would flow into his daughter’s body. Had a doctor or nurse been witness to the process, they would have been appalled and immediately sounded an alarm. But Harewood was alone in the room with his family, and had been assured the transfusion would work swiftly.
He had been here often enough and had asked the right questions to have a good idea what the numbers and readouts on the instrumentation surrounding the bed indicated. As he stared, they began to change. Indicators that he had not seen since before his daughter had been admitted to the hospital appeared and flashed. On the bed, a slight smile appeared on her face—a sign the pain that quietly racked her tiny body was fading. The stranger had kept his promise, Harewood realized.
His daughter would live.
That was it. Nothing more to be done.
No, that was not quite right. Bending over the girl, he kissed her softly on her smooth forehead. Much as he wanted to, he held back from repeating the gesture with his wife. However feathery, a kiss might wake her. Then there would be questions. Then she would wonder why he was not staying. Why today he could not take her place on watch.
The attendant at the front desk did not bother to sign him out as he hurried from the hospital.
Now, Harewood knew, it was time for him to keep his end of the bargain.
KELVIN MEMORIAL ARCHIVE
The sign above the imposing structure gave no indication of the importance of what was housed within.
Pausing on the rain-slicked sidewalk outside the entrance, something caused Harewood to turn. A flurry of vehicles soared past overhead, carrying early morning commuters to those jobs that required their actual physical presence as opposed to virtual. At that moment, Harewood desperately wished to be on one of them. Nothing would have pleased him more than to be on his way to a dull dead-end job, one wholly pedestrian and entirely without surprises.
Across the street stood the man with whom he had struck the bargain. The man who had somehow, in defiance of everything Harewood and his wife had been told, saved their daughter from a slow, certain death. He was watching. Quietly, calmly, without the slightest sign or suggestion of concern.
Harewood turned and entered the building. The arcade was old, perhaps eighteenth century. He was resigned now. At peace with himself. Renege on the agreement, and the miracle for which he was about to trade everything might evaporate, its promise never to be fulfilled. That was what he had been told, anyway, and he had no choice but to follow through on the last of his instructions. That was the warning Harewood had been given.
Can’t back out now, he thought. It didn’t matter. He had long since resolved to see the matter through to its end. It was not about him, anyway.
Would the frontline guard in the lobby notice anything unusual about his latest visitor? No, the guard was interested only in verifying his visitor’s ID as the light from the scanner traveled up and down Harewood’s face and upper body. When the check was successfully completed, the guard waved him on and returned to monitoring his readouts.
Surely someone will notice something’s not normal, Harewood thought. He fought to stay calm as he entered the thankfully empty elevator and thumbed a control. The lift started down, its descent uninterrupted. B-8, B-9, B- . . . A casual observer would have remarked on the unusual number of subterranean levels the elevator ticked off.
The real secret of the archive was that nothing was archived within. Few were curious enough to consider that in an age of multiple instant information backup, there was no need for such a facility to store anything that was not antique. The name was as much an artifice in reality as it was on the front of the building.
Emerging from the lift, Harewood entered a vast underground chamber. Working to maintain his poise, he paused to garner a glass of water from a dispenser. Around him, people and automatons were hard at work on shuttles and ship components, armaments, and modules that were intended for special operations in the cold reaches of deep space. Sparks flew, and in the distance, heavy machinery moved expensive equipment and components into position to be assembled by other robots. From time to time, he nodded in recognition to personnel as they passed.
An open work cubicle provided a semi-refuge from all the activity. Though he had barely been noticed, Harewood was still unaccountably nervous. Setting the water down on the small desk area, he made no attempt to mate a communicator, light player, or any other device to the cubicle’s secure dock. Working quickly, he sent the brief transmission he had composed. Then he sat quietly, contemplating the glass of water.
When he had let as much time pass as he thought wise, he slipped off his finger the silver-hued ring dominated by the insignia of Starfleet. Holding it over the glass, he hesitated ever so briefly.
No going back, he told himself. Not now. For his wife’s sake, for his daughter’s sake, he dared not hesitate.
He dropped the ring into the water—a Starfleet Academy class ring that was something more than what it seemed. He might have murmured something under his breath. A name, a hope, a prayer. There sounded the mellifluous plink of something solid and metallic landing in liquid. It began to fizz. To tremble, then to bounce.
His wife . . .
He never finished the thought, or anything else.
Tom Harewood vanished, the first casualty of the shockwave that tore across the underground chamber, obliterating everything in its path. Metal was twisted and torn, ceramics shattered, high-tech materials shredded. In the fiery burning chaos, mere flesh simply disintegrated. There was scarcely enough time for those trapped to scream before they died.
Above ground, a section of London erupted in flame and smoke. Successive concussions continued to detonate for some time after the initial explosion, sending flames, earth, debris, and people many stories high.
As old blues and new conversation filled the bar behind him, an utterly miserable James Kirk stared at the liquid in the glass on the table in front of him. It was rich and golden—unlike the ruins of his career.
The woman a couple of seats to his right was beautiful, and she smiled pleasantly enough when he grinned at her. Still have that, at least, he told himself.
Without uttering a word, a charcoal-and-gray uniformed senior officer abruptly sat down between them. Staring morosely down at his half-empty glass, unable to meet the older man’s gaze, Kirk could only sigh.
“How did you find me?”
“I know you better than you think I do.” With a glance at the bartender, Admiral Pike ordered for himself. “The first time I found you was in a dive like this. Remember that? You got your ass handed to you.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Kirk mumbled.
“It wasn’t? It was an epic beating.”
Kirk’s voice was beginning to slur. “No, it wasn’t.”
“You had napkins hangin’ out of your nose,” a remorseless Pike reminded him. The image, if not the memory, forced Kirk to laugh softly. “A good fight,” the admiral continued. After a pause, he added, “I think that’s your problem right there.”
Frowning, Kirk turned to regard his mentor.
“They gave her back to me,” Pike told him. “The Enterprise.”
Kirk took a moment to digest the news. He wanted to respond with something clever. Wanted to be brilliant, to be sharp. But all he could say was, “Congratulations.” No, that wasn’t enough. “Watch your back with that first officer, though.”
Pike shook his head. “Spock’s not going to be working with me. He’s been transferred. U.S.S. Bradbury.” The admiral let that sink in before saying, utterly unexpectedly: “You’re gonna be my First.”
As Kirk gaped at him, Pike continued. “Yeah, Marcus took some convincing. But every now and then I can make a good case.”
Stunned by a combination of alcohol and the unexpected revelation, Kirk could only mumble a reply. “What-what did you tell him?”
“The truth.” Pike stared hard at the younger officer. “That I believe in you. That if anybody deserves a second chance, it’s Jim Kirk.”
Not a good place or time to lose it, Kirk told himself, fighting to keep a grip on his emotions. “I don’t know what to say.”
It prompted a gentle, knowing smile from Pike. “That is a first.” Quietly he added, “It’s gonna be okay, son.”
He would have said more save for the beeping interruption of his communicator. Flipping it open, Pike regarded the information displayed, and frowned. “Emergency session, Daystrom. That’s us.”
“Yeah.” Still overwhelmed by the sudden change in his situation, Kirk’s reply was barely audible. Pike gave him a perfunctory rap on the arm.
“Suit up.”
Kirk was securing an overlooked fastener on his uniform as he rounded a corner. Reflecting the lateness of the hour, the interior of Starfleet headquarters was bathed in light; perfectly adequate illumination that was less harsh than bright sunshine. Despite the urgency of the call to Admiral Pike, he was still surprised to note the presence of additional security within the complex itself. Incoming personnel were undergoing multiple scans. Something was surely amiss, or so many would not have been called in at this time of night. What in Holy Asimov’s name was going on?
A figure appeared off to his right. Kirk increased his pace in hopes of avoiding any contact, to no avail. Recognizing him, the figure intercepted the captain long before he could hurry out of sight. Though caught, Kirk neither slowed down nor acknowledged the newcomer.
“Captain.”
It was amazing, an irritated Kirk reflected, how much import the science officer could cram into a single word.
“Hey.” Kirk kept on walking fast. This either did not offend the Vulcan or did not register with him as an indication of discontentment. Kirk’s continued lack of response, however, did.
“I sense,” Spock observed thoughtfully, “that you remain displeased.”
Kirk did not turn to look at the slender officer who continued to parallel his progress. “As usual, your powers of observation and analysis remain unsurpassed.”
“Sarcasm. You see, experience has taught me how to recognize it more accurately.”
“Bully for you. Why don’t you put your discovery in a report?”
“Linguistics are not my specialty. They are more the department of . . .” His voice faded away as if remembering something else. When he resumed, it was as it had been before. “Oh, I see. More sarcasm. Perhaps my sensitivity to that particular aspect of human speech is not as perfected as I thought.”
This time Kirk did look at him. “What? Something about the redoubtable Mr. Spock is not perfect?”
“Please, Captain. I am trying to make general, nonspecific conversation. This will prove difficult if you respond with derision to everything I say.”
Kirk’s voice rose, though not so much as to draw attention from any of the other passing personnel—many of whom were wearing serious expressions and moving with unaccountable speed.
“What do you expect? They took the Enterprise away from me. From both of us.”
If Spock was falsifying his reaction, it was superbly done. “Captain?”
Kirk shook his head sharply. “Not anymore. ‘First Officer.’” No, the Vulcan was not faking: He was genuinely surprised. “I lost my ship, Spock. Demoted. And you were reassigned.”
The science officer said nothing as they entered an elevator and Kirk snapped at the audio pickup. The door closed.
“It is fortunate the consequences were not more severe.”
“What?” Kirk gaped at him. “Oh, come on! You gotta be kidding me! No, no—maybe you’re right. I could’ve been kicked out of Starfleet altogether, right? Parsing the Prime Directive, that’s a dismissal charge. Except that it resulted in saving a burgeoning civilization from being knocked back in development a couple of thousand years. Ordinarily that’d be reason for praise and promotion. It might’ve been, too, if the whole business had been left alone for a while. Things could have been mentioned through channels, revealed quietly a little bit at a time. Starting with the xenologists’ news of the good that we did would have percolated gradually upward through Starfleet. Words would have led to papers, papers to discussion of an exception. But, oh, no, there’s no room for patience in the mind of certain officers. It’s all gotta be reported right away and by the book, or not at all.”
Spock silently digested Kirk’s rant before making an effort to respond supportively. “Captain, it was not my intention—”
A bitter Kirk cut him off. “Not Captain!” There was no humor in his sardonic smile. “Let’s keep the new ranks straight, shall we? By the book, as it were. I saved your life, Spock. I suppose I should be glad you mentioned that. Maybe that’s why I’m still in Starfleet.” He waved a dismissive hand as the lift door started to open. “It all boils down to one thing, Spock. You wrote a report, and as a result I lost my ship.”
They encountered fewer personnel in the upper level walkway. Intent on their assignments, none paused in their grim-faced hurrying to acknowledge the arrival of the two other officers.
“I see now,” Spock murmured, “that I should have alerted you about the report I submitted.”
Taking a deep breath, Kirk tried to explain. “This isn’t about the report! You just don’t get it, do you?”
“Please enlighten me, Captain— Please show me where I am failing to ‘get it.’” They turned a corner.
“Look,” Kirk began, “what’s done is done, okay? Nothing’s going to change that. I made a decision to do certain things on Nibiru, and you made the decision to file a formal report. That’s all over with, finished. I’m talking about afterwards. I’m talking about now. I respect your subsequent discipline or whatever it is, your decision to act but not to feel anything about the consequences of your action, but I can’t react like that. So, yeah, I’m a little pissed off. What I’m trying to say is that it would be nice to see a little compassion for what’s happened.” Kirk changed his mind and rejected Spock with a wave. “Forget it. This is like trying to explain a kid’s reaction on Christmas morning to a computer.”
Spock was about to request a detailed explanation of this analogy when, probably fortunately, they were confronted by an approaching captain who chose to engage them. Or at least one of them. With a perfunctory nod at Kirk, the newcomer directed his attention to the science officer.
“Commander Spock. Captain Frank Abbott, U.S.S. Bradbury. Guess you’re with me.”
“Yes, Captain. I was only recently informed that I had been reassigned.”
Continuing on the way the two other officers had come, the captain receded down the corridor. Both officers stood watching until Abbott had disappeared around the last corner. Kirk was still mad, but more than anything, he was unimaginably frustrated.
“The truth, Spock . . .” he mumbled under his breath. “I’m gonna miss you.”
No response was forthcoming. There was only that mildly quizzical Vulcan stare. Shouldn’t expect him to understand, Kirk thought. The science officer hadn’t understood before: There was no reason why he should now. Waste of time trying to make him see things from my point of view. From a human point of view. Without another word, Kirk turned and resumed heading toward his destination.
Spock watched him go. His expression, as usual, was quite unreadable. After a moment’s hesitation, he followed quietly.
He regretted very much that there must be appropriate words he did not know how to utilize in such situations.