A Few Good Men: Chapter 3
Chapter 1 * Chapter 2
Pike looked around as best he could strapped down on his back. It was not a military vessel but a working ship of some kind, one modified to be heavily armed as far as he could tell. Much of the technology was unlike anything he had ever seen. He’d have dismissed Ayel’s comments as clearly delusional if not for what he saw around him. Yet nothing he heard from Terran or Vulcan scientists indicated that time or universe travel was possible.
He heard Ayel’s voice in the distance. “The drill has reached the planet’s core.”
He heard Nero’s reply. “Prepare the red matter and launch.”
He strained his head upwards to catch glimpses of hurried activity, snatches of conversation he could not understand. Everyone was tense, but there was clearly a growing sense of anticipation.
“What’s going on?” he demanded of Ayel as the Romulan passed him.
Ayel stopped. Pike had the odd impression that Ayel wasn’t used to dealing with prisoners and kept being caught by a natural instinct to be polite.
“We are making use of yet another delightful contribution to the multiverse by your Vulcans. Red matter. A weapon of extraordinary power, manufactured from decalithium, the manufacturing process powered by dilithium which is part of the reason you psychopaths invaded us in the first place!”
Pike’s mind was swirling with so many questions he didn’t know where to start.
“You want to know what red matter can do? Let me share it with you. Let me show you what I first saw when it happened to ch'Rihan, which you call Romulus.”
With a wave of hand Ayel brought up a three-dimensional view of Vulcan suspended in space. Pike was astounded by the power of the technology that had produced the image, and even more so by the power of the weapon that was causing the planet’s surface to twist and buckle.
“You’re destroying an entire planet?” It just didn’t compute. Everything he had ever been told of the two hundred years since First Contact told him of the natural superiority of Vulcans, of their logical right to rule. A group of renegade Romulans should not be able to do this.
“It’s only the beginning of our revenge,” ground out Ayel. They watched in silence as the planet convulsed. Out of his swirl of confusion, Pike picked one question.
“The Kelvin. Who destroyed her? Are there other ships like yours?”
“The Kelvin?”
“Yes, one of our ships was destroyed by a vessel like yours twenty-five years ago.”
“Twenty-five years?” Ayel sounded bemused. “I suppose it is. It is only a few days ago for us. We time-jumped too early. Once we found out the stardate from your ship we were able to jump again with more accuracy.”
"You're delusional," accused Pike. "There is no technology that would let you do that."
"I think your ideas about technology may be a little limited," snapped Ayel. "That view I saw of the bridge of your ship looked pretty clunky."
Pike bristled. The Enterprise was his pride and joy. He'd spent years ensuring she had the very best of everything the Empire had to offer. He wasn't letting some crazy Romulan with a tattoo fetish insult his lady.
"How do you do it, then?"
"We got the technology for generating temporal vortexes off the Borg back in 2373. They sent a ship back in our universe, back to 2063 to prevent First Contact between Terrans and Vulcans. Our Vulcans being a pretty decent species, you understand. Captain Picard followed them back in time and foiled their plan." Ayel pondered for a moment. "I wonder if that happened here. Did you ever hear anything about a strange ship being found near the North Pole of Earth, in 2153?"
Pike nodded slowly. He'd heard rumors, even found a few references in the Imperial databases but everything had been sealed with the highest level of classification.
"Well, that was the remains of a Borg cube."
"I've never heard of them," sneered Pike.
"Count yourself lucky," snapped Ayel. "They went quiet for a century or so but they are back with a vengeance in my time. If we can't change our future for the better, I only hope that you and your Vulcans all get assimilated by the Borg. It will serve you fuckers right!"
Time jumping? Parallel universes? Another great alien enemy? How much of this did the Vulcans know about? How much else was hidden from the other species in the Empire? Pike felt the resentment that he had fought all his career to suppress welling up once again. “Why do you want to be here now specifically?”
“Fuck knows,” said Ayel with a shrug. “Clearly we had to come far enough back in time to give us an unassailable technological advantage. But Spock was adamant that we had to come to this time period.”
“Spock?”
“Not your one. Our one.” Ayel’s attention was drawn back to the projection. “And there she goes. Farewell, motherfuckers. May the Powers and Elements forgive them, because we won’t.”
Pike watched as what seemed like a dust storm started up on the surface of the russet-brown orb. It expanded with sickening speed, a tornado, a whirlpool, a lightning storm with great plumes of debris, a chaos of shattered crust being pulled into an interior gone eerily blue. And finally nothing at all beyond the infinite darkness of deep space. An entire planet had been sucked into its own maw. All around him hysterical cheers were ringing out from the crew. Pike stared unhearing at the simulation which showed nothing but darkness.
Vulcan was gone. What would become of them all now?
* * * *
“Osu Zhe-lan, sorry, Captain, sorry, Khart-lan... the jamming signals are gone, transporter abilities are reestablished.”
Spock turned to a flustered Chekov. “Check out gravitational sensors, I want to know what they are doing to the planet.”
“Osu Khart-lan, gravitational sensors are off the scale. If my calculations are correct, they’re creating a singularity that will consume the planet. A black hole at the center of Vulcan." Chekov cringed in his seat, clearly fearing the messenger was about to take the blame for the bad news. "The planet has minutes, osu.”
Minutes. Spock was up on his feet without a second thought, heading for the turbolift. “Uhura, signal a planet wide evacuation, all channels, all frequencies. Chekov, you have the conn.”
She ran after him. “Where are you going osu?”
He should discipline her for deserting her post but he felt too buoyed by her obvious concern. Ever since he had been rejected as not enough of a Vulcan for the honor of the Vulcan Science Academy and exiled to live among mere Terrans, he had been surrounded by beings that feared and hated him. He had yet to decide if that was better or worse than being surrounded by Vulcans who feared and despised him. Either way, it was disconcertingly pleasurable to have someone who cared.
“I go to evacuate the Vulcan high council. They will be in the katric arc. They cannot be beamed. My father will be among them,” he said. His mother would be among them.
He strode into the transporter room to find Kirk and Sulu staggering off the platform. Terrans, he thought furiously. You couldn’t even trust them to get a suicide mission right.
“Clear the pad. I am beaming to the surface.”
He swirled out of sight with Kirk’s voice echoing in his ears. “Beaming where? Are you nuts?” A small part of his mind made a note that said cadet never had learnt to address his superiors with appropriate respect and that would need to be seen to. Another part was telling him that it was already far, far too late for such details to matter.
He pounded down the tunnel to where the sacred relics of Vulcan’s cultural history were stored, to where the High Council stood, servants in attendance, deep in meditation, ignoring the seismic activity round them. Of course they had made no effort to evacuate themselves, Spock thought bitterly. In the entire history of their race, their home planet had never been attacked. With a pattern that strongly entrenched, they saw it as an immutable law of the universe. As ever throughout his torn life, he felt his human emotions warring against his Vulcan training, his human cynicism fighting his Vulcan pride.
The closest they had come to danger in centuries was in 2154 when Jonathan Archer, the last great traitor to be produced by the Terrans, had blown up the United Earth Diplomatic Station that had orbited the planet of Vulcan, Terrans not being allowed to actually land on the planet's surface. The maniac had killed over 40 people, by far the most important being the Emperor Syrran. The man was lucky to have been killed himself in the explosion as no punishment would have been good enough for such treachery.
Fortunately the blessed Syrran had completed his sacred work of transcribing the works of Surak and the holy servant of her people Empress T'Pau had been able to continue his great vision of expanding the Empire, bringing the civilization of logic to the barbarous species of the quadrant. Except that now barbarism was hitting back with unthinkable technological prowess.
“Opidsular, Osa-mekh, na'shayalar na'kanok-veh la.” He bowed low, observing the proper greetings. Such a waste of time, screamed a voice in the back of his mind. “We must evacuate. Ah'rak is under attack.” They turned to stare at him, superior, supercilious, judgmental. The very blankness of their faces told him how much they found him wanting.
It was just like being back at school, facing off against his full-blood peers. The sudden awkward silence when he joined the group. The subtle step backwards as if his very presence was a contamination of their blood purity. If he was lucky, finally a little patronizing conversation as if they suspected his half-breed intellect could not follow a Vulcan discourse without study notes. That was how it had played out every day of his schooling when in the presence of their teachers. Of course when they'd managed to corner him without adults present, well, that had been different.
He was trying to think of what to say to get them to believe him without wasting more precious time when a giant statue of Surak that doubled up as pillar shook loose and fell, crushing Ask'er-kahr-lan Sarpk. That got their full attention.
The senior Vulcans seized various artifacts and began to hurry away, still too slowly, burdened as they were by books and statuettes. Spock wanted to scream at them all in his frustration. No amount of data in the universe was worth them all dying for. But of course that was a heretical thought. The preservation of information was all important. Information was immortal. Any one life was expendable.
The long corridor was tumbling down around them. He pulled the books out of his father’s grasp, dashing the precious tomes to the floor as he pushed him forward, while grabbing for his mother’s hand and dragging her behind him. The bodyguards and servants stood in shocked silence in the chamber behind them. They had no expectation of evacuation.
Several Vulcans were crushed as statues of renowned generals who had expanded the Vulcan Empire across the quadrant shook loose from the tunnel walls and fell upon them. Now everyone was running for real. Still Spock held onto his mother. Let the bastards judge him for it. Once they’d thanked him for saving their lives. As they cleared the tunnel mouth Spock was screaming into his comm: “Enterprise, energize. Energize!”
He could hear the countdown coming through the comm, could see the beginnings of the swirl of beaming that would whisk them to safety. His leaders safe. His culture safe. His mother safe.
In the distance molten lava was belching from giant cracks torn through the rocky landscape. Mountain peaks were imploding into ever widening ravines. Plumes of dust were darkening the sky. The cliff edge was crumbling as they waited, shattering into the abyss, the splintering lip ever closer to where they stood. As the beam took, he saw his father lean over and gently, firmly, push his mother over the edge.
He reached out desperately through the swirling energy of the beam, watched her slip silently backwards into the abyss of rock and dust, her veil slipping loose like a last tempting rope that still he could not reach to save her. Her eyes were all for him, not a glance went to the alien man that had ruined her life and now finally ended it.
Spock landed on the pad with his arm still stretched out to her. He stared at the empty space at his side for a long moment before turning to his father, pleading silently for an explanation.
“t'Spock, sa-fu t'Sarek, it was a logical use of an opportunity,” said Sarek serenely. “A way to remove a stain from the family honor.”
Spock stood unmoving, unable to compute. He looked at the three other Vulcan leaders. There was no dissent, no condemnation. His mother was only half of the stain that had befouled the life of Sarek for the last thirty years. He wondered whether Sarek would have removed the second half if he’d had time for a second push.
In an ideal world a male Vulcan’s shame of which it is not spoken would always happen in the presence of his bond mate, a bond mate selected for him back in childhood. But at times things did not go as planned. The Vulcan was away on official duties. The seven-year cycle was inconsistent. The onset was unexpectedly quick. Such anomalies had become increasingly prevalent in the last century. In such circumstances a pragmatic approach was taken with a physically compatible female of another species privately provided to allow for the required relief. What did not ever happen was that these substitute females became pregnant. Until one did.
Amanda Grayson, a civilian linguist working at the governor's palace at the Palais de l'Elysée, had been assigned to Kevet-dutar Sarek when his time came upon him while on Terra. The woman had been incarcerated while the Vulcans considered what to do. Mixing of species was an anathema to them, and they firmly believed in the termination of undesirable pregnancies in the interest of the improvement of the gene pool of lesser species.
But to lose a Vulcan child was an anathema in the present circumstances. In the thousand years since their atomic holocaust, Vulcan numbers had increased slowly, then ever more rapidly. Their women fell pregnant with great reliability every seven years. As better health increased their lifespans, some of their women stayed fertile for over a century. Numbers increased exponentially and the establishment of colony planets seemed inevitable.
But in the last two hundred years, when the Empire had finally begun to expand with aggressive rapidity, something had gone wrong. Their women were not always conceiving. Miscarriages and stillbirths were ever more common. Babies were being born with unacceptable deformities. The current best guess of their scientists was that Vulcan sperm seemed to degrade in quality, the longer the male was away from their home planet.
Increasingly Imperial outposts, labor camps and colonies were being left in the hands of non-Vulcan administrators as Vulcans returned to their home world to breed. Despite the inter-species prohibitions, there was great reluctance to lose a child with even half a complement of Vulcan genes. Eventually it was decided that it would be logical to take advantage of this opportunity to discover whether Vulcan genes would overcome or be polluted by human ones.
The pregnancy went ahead. With the Vulcan emphasis on family, Amanda remained with Sarek as something more than a house servant, something less than a nanny, the only non-Vulcan allowed onto the planet's surface. Her own wishes in the matter were of course irrelevant. And Spock entered the world as a living experiment, less than Vulcan, more than human. A shame on the aristocratic house of his father. The ruin of the life of his talented linguist mother.
He understood that it had been logical for Sarek to use this opportunity to rid himself of a burden. He understood that what he was about to do was driven by pure selfish emotion. He understood that he was letting the stain of his humanity poison his Vulcan logic. But he’d loved her, for all he’d never told her.
He stepped down from the pad, walked across to the transporter console and reversed the controls. His father and the three other Vulcans dematerialized. “Dif-tor heh smusma,” he whispered softly.
Spock walked past a shocked Sulu and Kirk, past an astounded transporter technician, and headed for the bridge. He settled into the command chair in time to see Vulcan implode in on itself on the view screen. He thought nothing, felt nothing.
* * * *
Vulcan was gone. Pike’s mind circled endlessly, helplessly, hopelessly around this unimaginable fact. Vulcan was gone. What would humanity do now? Without the Vulcans to shape them, direct them, advance them, how could they ever be anything more than animals that would revert to their native savagery and tear each other apart?
His thoughts were interrupted by the approach of Nero. The Romulan leader was clearly satisfied with the course of events. “Christopher. You must have a lot of questions for me. I only have one for you. I need the sub-space frequencies of Starfleet’s border protection grids. Specifically those surrounding Earth.”
Panic surged through Pike. Earth. Of course they were going to go after Earth next. He’d been too consumed by the destruction of Vulcan to think it through.
“Christopher, answer my question.”
“No, you answer for the genocide you just committed against a peaceful planet.”
“Peaceful?” scoffed Nero. “No, Christopher. I prevented genocide. I administered justice. Where I come from this is a simple mining vessel. I chose a life of honest labor, to provide for myself and the wife who was expecting my child.” He waved into existence a floating simulation, a slender young woman with curly blonde hair looking at them with an indulgent expression on her face. “I was off-planet doing my job while your Empire invaded. They destroyed the first planet they encountered as a lesson to us all. My planet, ch'Rihan. Our Empire fell. The Federation capitulated. I have carried that pain ever since.”
“If the Vulcans did indeed invade, you’ve had your revenge. There’s no need to go after Earth.”
“Why not? Because you humans are just following orders? It's been centuries since it was established that the plea of superior orders is not valid in interplanetary law. There was a moral choice to be made and you humans failed to make it."
Nero lent over the bed, his snarling face only inches above Pike's.
"They brought you with them, the Vulcans. Their human pets, their attack dogs. To do all the dirty work of slave-holding and punishing, of torturing and killing. All the shit they considered themselves too intellectually superior to do themselves.
“Maybe they have brutalized you. But you in turn have brutalized other species. A killer animal that is too traumatized to be tamed must be euthanized. I’m putting down your entire world. For the good of your universe. For the safety of mine. I will annihilate your Empire, planet by planet, so that you will never be able to invade other worlds.”
Pike glared back at him. Now this he knew how to deal with. He had considerably more training than he would have liked in resisting torture. “Then we have nothing left to discuss. I will tell you nothing. I am Christopher Pike, Captain, DV882--"
Nero pulled back from the table, regarding Pike with sardonic amusement. “Oh Christopher. Do you really think we are so primitive that we will try to torture the information out of you? I have a planet to kill. You mean nothing to me. Ayel, the slug.”
Pike watched bewildered as Ayel handed Nero a small insect-like creature with a hard shell and long antennae. “Centaurian slugs. They latch onto your brain stem. And release a toxin that will compel you to answer.”
Ayel seized his head, forcing open his jaw as Nero dropped the creature into his mouth. He tried to avoid swallowing but the creature crawled into the back of his mouth of its own accord, its antennae tearing against the tender membranes of his throat. He could feel every inch of its agonizing progress.
“Ayel, inform me once it takes effect.” Nero left them and Ayel injected Pike in the neck.
“Waz'at for?” he rasped, throat raw from the passage of the bug.
“Local anesthetic. There will be some discomfort as the slug eats it way through your stomach lining and makes its way up your spinal cord. You will receive medical treatment to repair the damage. We are not torturers. We simply need information.”
“Not torturers, just mass-killers,” spat Pike.
Ayel looked away, clearly uncomfortable. It was becoming increasingly clear to Pike that these men were not soldiers. What had compelled them to do this?
“And I suppose you have some similar sob-story to Nero,” snapped Pike. “Some pathetic romantic tragedy that drove you to this.”
“Not quite the same,” said Ayel. He perched himself on the edge of Pike’s table. “Why not? While we wait, let me tell you why I want you, your people, your planet and your Empire wiped from the history of the multiverse. I did lose friends and family on ch'Rihan. But that isn’t what drove me to this. That was your morality laws.”
He fell silent for a long moment, before continuing in a flinty monotone. “I’m an energy engineer, specializing in the exploitation of dilithium. I was seconded from the Romulan navy to Starfleet to work on a joint energy project. I met a young human scientist there, Josh, and had fallen for him before our first briefing meeting ended. We were inseparable within weeks, married before the year was out.”
“Married?” spat Pike. “That’s a travesty.”
“Exactly. Homosexual. Interspecies. We had ten extraordinary years together, working on energy extraction projects, almost never apart, before your Vulcans invaded our universe to tell us what a travesty our marriage was. They imposed the morality laws and procreation protocols almost as their first act in power. Our marriage was annulled as were all such unions and Josh and I were sent to different mining planets, now turned into forced labor camps. Compelled to work seven days a week on ever accelerated ways of extracting dilithium. There was no warning. No time to say goodbye.”
“Cry me a river,” sneered Pike.
Ayel stood up by the table, staring coldly down at Pike. “I did see him once more. On a holo-vid. On my prison planet I just kept my head down, tried to survive, hoped to eventually find my way back to him. But he was made of sterner stuff. He started a resistance movement. Eventually led a rebellion and took over the mine. He held off the guards for nearly four days before the rebellion was subdued and he was captured.”
Ayel took a deep breath before continuing. “They tortured him to death over another four days. Let the suffering last as long as the rebellion had. They recorded all of it and then sent the edited highlights out to all the other mining planets. We got an entire day off work while we sat and watched it, the only day off we’d had in months. The other prisoners didn’t know that I knew him but my Vulcan overseers did. I had to sit there, unflinching, emotionless, and watch my husband be tortured to death.”
Even Pike found himself at a loss for words. The silence stretched out between them. Finally Ayel spoke again.
“His name was Josh Pike. He was your great-great-grandson.”
* * * *
“Lieutenant, have you confirmed that Nero is headed for Terra?”
Uhura swung round to face her new captain. “Their trajectory suggests no other destination osu” He gave her a brief glance, sat upright at her station, clearly eager to impress him with her ability. At least she was still committed to following his orders. Any minute now the rest of the humans on board would start to do some basic math. In Spock’s estimation there were no more than 10 000 Vulcans left in the entire Empire.
After the first flush of Imperial expansion Vulcans had soon proved to be uncomfortable living among the lesser species. When the fertility problems had begun to manifest many had chosen to return home. Increasingly labor camps in mining planets and other Imperial outposts were run by other species under remote biometric surveillance via the Information Awareness Office.
Humans had no fertility problems. There were billions of them in the Empire. They bred like cockroaches, despite the Vulcans’ best efforts at control. Humans worthy of replication, such as Starfleet officers, were permitted two children. They were expected to produce these children with alacrity while in their thirties for men and in their twenties for women - prime breeding age according to Vulcan science. The free laboring classes were permitted one child. The Vulcans would have preferred even fewer breeders but humans were surprisingly stubborn in their emotional attachment to the notion of offspring. Undesirables - the mentally deficient or physically handicapped, the overly promiscuous, homosexuals, rebel sympathizers, entire racial groups considered to be backward - were subject to mandatory chemical sterilization.
But even the most draconian restrictions had not stopped the breeding. Humans lied and cheated and bribed. Controls often lay in the hands of local breeding control officers, seldom Vulcan themselves and dismayingly liable to corruption. On the more remote colony planets entire feral societies had sprung up known as the off-grids. Lacking in education and health care, the worst of the human species bred like flies.
Those people were deeply primitive but many more than 10 000 Terrans were not. And the best and brightest of their entire race were aboard the Enterprise. Spock had done the crew assignments. He’d made sure of it.
“Earth may be his next stop but we have to assume that every Imperial planet is a target.” Kirk strode onto the bridge, battered, bruised and as cocky as ever.
Spock ignored him. Time was of the essence. Sooner or later the humans would realize their numerical superiority. Sooner rather than later Kirk would realize. He must make contact with his commanding officers and receive further orders. “Mr Sulu, plot a course for the Laurentian system. We must gather with the rest of Starfleet before the next engagement.”
“Spock, get your head out of the military manual. There won’t be a next engagement. By the time we’ve gathered it’ll be too late. Running back to the rest of the fleet for a... a confab is a massive waste of time and utterly predictable. We need to take them by surprise.”
Kirk leaned forward so that he was right up in Spock's face. "Besides, the fleet have some little problems of their own right now."
Spock stiffened. The rebellion that no one acknowledged officially but that apparently everyone knew about. The fleet would struggle to fight on two fronts at one. But he didn't know what else to do. He hated to be reminded of the rigidity of thinking that even he knew was the greatest weakness of the Vulcan race. “Those are orders issued by Captain Pike when--”
“He also ordered us to go back and get him. Spock, you are captain now. You have to fucking think for yourself.”
“Cadet! You are not cleared to be on this ship. Your input--”
“Who the fuck cares after all that’s happened? Every second we waste he’s getting closer to his next target.”
“Security! Escort Kirk out.” He knew his duty. Follow his orders. He didn’t need some wayward human confusing his thinking processes. He didn’t need some lunatic human trying to seize control.
“You fucking coward. Try having an original thought for once. We’ve got to hunt him down.” Kirk was being pulled backwards by two security personnel, struggling wildly. He lashed out, knocking one down, kicking out the knees of the other, rushing at Spock.
Spock caught him by throat. He was faster. He was stronger. It was a clear sign of his superiority. He knew this. He held on, squeezing steadily, until the cadet’s eyes were bulging. “Death at my hands is too good for you. You don’t deserve the honor. Security, put him in an ejector pod and fire him at nearest planet. Work your way out of that one, cadet.”
* * * *
Kirk tumbled down the snowy slope, head over heels, seeing through the jumble of his own limbs an avalanche of snow, giant red appendages and gaping fang-filled mouth rolling behind him. He thought he’d done damned well so far. Landed on a class M planet not far from a Starfleet outpost. Climbed out of the impact crater. Been saved from the beaver-on-steroids that had been chasing him by the vast red spider-cum-venus-flytrap thing behind him. The only downside was that spider-venus had then decided to take up the pursuit.
Spotting the mouth of an ice cave ahead of him, he ran for it, slipping over the slick ice, scrabbling through the entrance, pushing into the deep blue depths. A long whip-like tongue flicked out, snagged round his boot, bought him crashing down onto the ice. He scrabbled for purchase but was sliding inexorably backwards when a figure carrying a torch ran into view and began to drive off the monster.
He lay on his back, panting. A finger in the face of death, yet again. He was enjoying himself. It beat his average day at the Academy.
“James T. Kirk. How did you find me?”
He looked up in confusion as what appeared to be an elderly Vulcan but the gentle smile and kindly eyes made him quite unlike any Vulcan Kirk had ever known.
“How the fuck do you know my name?”
The Vulcan - shockingly - offered him a hand and helped him to his feet.
“I have been and always shall be your friend.”
Friend? He didn’t have friends. He had tools and enemies. Superiors and underlings. But not friends.
“Bullshit. I don’t know you.”
The Vulcan led him to a fire deeper in the cave.
“It is remarkably pleasing to see you again, old friend, especially after the events of today. I am Spock.”
Kirk began to back away slowly, despite his longing to huddle up by the fire. Man-eating predators were all in a day’s work. Lunatic Vulcans were another matter. “Sir, I appreciate what you did for me today but if you were Spock you’d know we’re not friends at all. You hate me. You marooned me here for mutiny.”
“Mutiny?” Spock didn’t sound terribly surprised by this.
“Yeah.”
“You are not the captain?” This seemed to puzzle him more.
“No, you’re the captain. Pike was taken hostage.”
“By Nero.”
“What do you know about him?” demanded Kirk. This day was getting stranger by the minute.
“He is a good man, but troubled. We have not managed to see eye to eye despite setting out on a shared mission.”
“A shared mission? Then how did you end up here?”
Spock sighed. “We banded together in desperation. One hundred and twenty nine years from now, your Vulcan Empire, having ruined your own universe, invaded ours. They brought with them a weapon so terrible it could destroy planets. The weapon you saw used on Vulcan just now.” Spock paused, bowed his head. “May they rest in peace,” he said softly.
Looking back at Kirk, he continued. “They destroyed Romulus, defeated the Federation in short order and imposed their Imperial rule over both areas. The fall of the Federation was in many ways the fault of my own people. They simply could not believe that their kin could act in ways so inimical to the teaching of Surak. It was only when the genocide of the native Vulcans began that we realized our error. I was away on a Romulan colony, attempting to effect a reconciliation between our two species, and so was overlooked by the invaders."
Kirk was surreptitiously trying to back away while the Vulcan spoke. Vulcan minds were supposed to be immune to madness but listening to this tale of utter fantasy, that clearly wasn't the case.
Spock continued. “I formed an alliance with the Romulan miner Nero and the men and women he recruited from the mining planet he worked on. Both our nations had been reduced to cowering shadows of their former selves. No one was fighting back. We came up with the most radical plan we could conceive. To cross universes, travel back in time and try to prevent the tragedy before it ever started.”
"But that isn't possible," protested Kirk. "Is it?"
"More is possible in the multiverse than you have ever dreamed of," said Spock gently. "Many of those possibilities will be discovered by you in the course of your long and stellar career."
Kirk frowned. Much as he'd like to talk about himself, there was a fundamental flaw in the mad Vulcan's story. “So how come you’re down here and Nero's up there?” he demanded. He had made his way back to the fire and was huddling close, while carefully keeping it between him and the pseudo-Spock.
“We stole the Vulcan’s weapon of terror, the red matter, and a ship they used to drill planets. We had acquired temporal vortex technology from the Borg, and we adapted a multidimensional transport device to move us and the ship between universes. My intention was always to negotiate, letting the red matter weapon put us in a position of strength. Perhaps I was foolish to believe I could bargain with such people but I had hoped to come back to a time when the evil was less of a way of life, when the Empire was weakening and it might still be stopped."
"Weakening? The Vulcan Empire has never been more glorious, or so they tell us," challenged Kirk.
"I accessed your Empire's history after the invasion. Your Vulcans have yet to realize that the worship of data may be a weakness as much as a strength. What you know, your enemies may come to know too. At this moment in time, most Vulcans have retreated back to the home planet, the fleet is attempting to put down a vicious and tenacious rebellion in the Laurentian system, the humans on Terra are getting ever more restless and your Empress T'Pau is beginning to feel her age but is refusing to set up a line of succession, letting her favorites fight it out among themselves."
The Vulcan's analysis was surprisingly accurate. "So what changes?" asked Kirk curiously.
"Three years from now my half-brother in this universe, Sybok, will lead a coup d’état, having T'Pau discreetly killed and proclaiming himself Emperor. He will placate the rebellious Terrans and colonists by announcing that emotion has a place along with logic in the search for self-knowledge. He will turn their energies away from the rebellions into the new religion he will create, a cult called the Galactic Army of Light which will promise them relief from their psychic pain and a pathway directly to a God who resides behind the Great Barrier. That panacea, along with the technological advances that will be made in the next fifty years and the solution to the Vulcan fertility problem will leave the Empire stronger than ever. We had to come back to a time before that."
Spock looked across the flickering flames, until he held and locked gazes with Kirk. "But most importantly, I came back to a time when I, and you, were young and idealistic and might be persuaded to work with me to change the course of history.”
“Idealistic? Me?” scoffed Kirk. “I couldn’t give a shit for any of them. You wanted me to have ideals? You’d have needed to arrive before I was born.”
“Indeed,” said Spock sadly. “I believe your birth may have been a terrible tragedy of our inadvertent making.”
“What d’you mean?” demanded Kirk.
“We emerged in your universe unsure of the stardate. We took a hostage from the first ship we encountered, having first fired on them to make clear our might. We had no reason to trust anyone from your universe. When the captive told us we’d arrived nearly thirty years too early, Nero simply had the ship destroyed before I had the time to argue for another course. That ship was the ISS Kelvin.”
Spock looked at him with sad eyes. “Forgive me, old friend. Because of me, you have grown up in this universe without a father.”
For the first time in a tumultuous day Kirk found himself at a loss for words.
“We jumped forward in time to the present. Nero was clear that he intended to destroy Vulcan as Vulcan had destroyed Romulus. I wished to negotiate. To try and find you and myself. Nero would have none of it. He stranded me here so that he could continue with his plan unimpeded.”
Jim tried to make sense of this unbelievable swirl of information. One thing stuck out over all others.
“Wait, where you come from, did I know my father?”
“Yes, you often spoke of him as being your inspiration for joining Starfleet. He proudly lived to see you become captain of the Enterprise.”
“Captain?”
“A ship we must return you to as soon as possible. Jim, in my world you were an inspirational leader. Loved, respected, widely admired. You aroused intense loyalty among your crew. Many spent most of their careers serving under your command. Several risked their careers at your call. You can do the same in this universe. Indeed, this reality is even more desperately in need of your abilities.”
Kirk hesitated, disbelieving and yet desperately curious. He could imagine being feared. He could imagine buying loyalty with bribery and blackmail. But this did not seem to be what Spock meant. He’d always thought of himself as an outsider. Abandoned by everyone who had mattered to him. The boy that brought pain rather than joy to both his mother and his brother. The son of a hero who showcased failure rather than courage. The cadet who took the oath of loyalty with a heart already set on betrayal.
Strangers might try to make friends with him, brown-nosing the heroic name, but once they knew him - knew his inner crazy - they backed away unless, like Pike, they were trying to use him, or, like Bones, they themselves were too crazy to know better. He couldn’t imagine anyone voluntarily following him, let alone liking him.
Seeing the doubt on Kirk’s face, Spock circled round the fire and reached out to him. “Please allow me, it will be easier. Our minds. One and together.” Kirk backed away but the Vulcan was surprisingly strong, despite his age. Bony fingers settled against his cheekbone and temple.
Chapter 4