Even as he drew back, Amanda instinctively knew that her life had
changed forever. There was only one possible explanation for Sarek's
words and action--he wanted her for his wife. She knew from her studies
that Vulcans did not waste time in casual dalliance.
For a moment he regarded her intently, his eyes filled with all the
things he could not say aloud. Then, without another word, the Vulcan
offered her his arm to help her back up the beach. Amanda went with him,
her whole body conscious of his touch, of the heat of his skin beneath
his sleeve.
I love him, she realized. I've loved him from the first, and didn't
realize it until now.
September 16,2293
Just finished rereading that journal entry. Oh, my/ Was I ever that
young?
And yet ... if I close my eyes, I can still taste that kiss, even after
sixty-four years.
I have had a good life. I have been blessed. There are few regrets ...
But for now, I am tired ... must rest ...
Captain James T. Kirk stood in the coruscating glow of the transporter
beam, dreading what he would see as soon as he materialized on the world
called Patelva. Yesterday the Enterprise had been summoned to the colony
world that had been decimated by a raid. The captain had made one quick
reconnaissance to the planet, then returned, sickened, to his ship,
leaving Dr. McCoy and his medical staff to their grim work of trying to
save as many of the pitifully wounded survivors as they could.
As the transporter beam faded around him, Kirk could hear the sounds of
the wounded. The beam-down coordi nates were in the center of a group of
hastily thrown-up bubbletents, so, unlike yesterday, he was not
surrounded by shattered and torn bodies ... which was a relief. But the
sounds were bad enough.
Medical personnel scurried to and fro, racing frantically to beat their
ancient enemy. In a distant field, filled with crops that would never be
harvested now, security personnel stoically attended to the hideous work
of disposing of the corpses.
"Captain ..." Kirk turned away from the grim scene to find his first
officer at his elbow. "I have completed my interviews with the few
uninjured survivors I could locate.
Their reports all concur Klingons did this."
The captain gazed around him, and sighed. There hadn't been much doubt
about who the assailants were--the patterns were all there. "I know," he
said. "I just finished speaking to Chancellor Azetbur on subspace
communications.
She confirmed that their sensors have picked up a number of Klingon
vessels crossing the Neutral Zone lately, but swore to me on her
father's honor that none of them has been authorized to do so by her
government."
"More renegades," Spock said, his normally expressionless features
touched with sadness. "Chang has set a precedent, I fear."
"I'm afraid that Azetbur's going to go down, Spock," Kirk said.
"Everything looked so hopeful last month at Khitomer, but now ..." He
shrugged slightly. "The media back on Earth are having a field day with
these renegade raids. Many of the delegates to the Security Council are
calling for Ra-ghoratrei to withdraw his support of Azetbur's
government."
"I know. And without the support of the Federation, Azetbur has little
chance to remain in power."
"The chancellor is the Empire's only hope for survival, Spock!" Kirk
said wearily. "If I can see that, so can others."
The Vulcan nodded, his dark eyes bleak. He started to comment, but
before he could do so, a familiar voice made both officers turn.
"What's the news on the Federation hospital ship?" Dr. Leonard McCoy
demanded, coming up from behind the two officers. The chief surgeon's
medical tunic was splashed and streaked with drying blood and even less
pleasant substances, and his blue eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue.
"Dammit, Jim, my people are ready to drop, and I can't spare a one of'em
for a break. We've got to get some reliefl"
"The ship's on its way, Bones," Kirk was quick to assure the medical
officer. "ETA is thirty-six hours from now."
"Damn!" McCoy growled; then he sighed. "Can you at least beam down some
more security people? They're not trained, but they can help clean up
and make sandwiches for the staff." Kirk nodded and, taking out his
communicator, quickly gave the order. McCoy busied himself dispatching
the security teams to where they were most needed, then turned back to
regard his friends wearily. "Thanks, Jim. This is one helluva mess ...
"
"I know, Bones."
"Who did it?" McCoy demanded, staring out across the jury-rigged medical
compound. "As if I didn't already know from the disrupter patterns on
the bodies."
"Klingons, Doctor," Spock said. "But Chancellor Azet-bur has stated that
they were renegades, not governmentally sanctioned troops."
"I suppose so," the doctor said, rubbing a hand over his face, leaving
smears across his forehead. "Damn, but what I've seen in the past
twenty-four hours almost makes me regret spending the past month
studying Klingon anatomy and medical procedures."
"The Empire is in chaos, Bones," Kirk said. "Any time you get a
situation like this, you find terrorism on the rise.
Any time you try paring down a huge standing army, you get soldiers that
don't want to give up war."
"Especially considering that war has been the main focus of the Klingon
culture for several thousand years," Spock said, quietly. "If the--" The
Vulcan broke off as his communicator beeped. "Spock here," he said
crisply.
"Mr. Spock, I'm receiving a Priority One personal message for you, sir,"
Commander Uhura's voice reported. "It's from your father."
"Relay it on screen, please, Commander." Kirk tensed as he watched the
Vulcan scan the message on the tiny camp computer screen, noting the way
his friend's eyes narrowed and the skin over his jaw tightened. When
Spock looked up, he took a step forward and touched his friend's arm
lightly with his fingertips. "What is it, Spock?" The Vulcan took a deep
breath. "It is my mother, Jim. I just received a message from my father,
saying that she is seriously ill." He paused, then seemed to force the
words out, as though speaking them caused him pain. "Actually, Sarek
used the word 'terminally' ill." Kirk had lost his own mother a few
years ago ... Spock's words brought back the grief of those days all
too vividly.
"Spock, does it say what's wrong?" McCoy asked, his blue eyes filled
with concern.
"She has contracted a blood disease." Spock's normally even tones were
strained. "Reyerson's disease is somewhat rare. It is extremely serious,
especially to the very old or the very young. My mother," the Vulcan
finished bleakly, "is in her nineties." Kirk's mother, Winona, had been
in her late eighties at the time of her death. In the twenty-third
century the human life span was longer on the average than it had ever
been, but only ten percent of the population lived for
a century or
more. Kirk drew a deep breath. "Go home," he ordered. "Go now. Take the
shuttlecraft to Starbase Eleven. You can get a transport from there, and
reach Vulcan in five days," he said.
Spock hesitated, glanced around him. "But we are on a mission ... my
duty is to my ship ..."
"Dammit, Spock, this is a medical mission," McCoy said.
"If you've got a medical degree it's news to me. Go. We don't need you
here. Your mother does." The Vulcan finally nodded. "Very well. Thank
you, Captain.
I will depart immediately." Moments later, Kirk and McCoy watched the
last flicker of maroon vanish in the transporter beam, and knew the
Vulcan was on his way.
"Jim, this is terrible," McCoy said, his eyes shadowed.
"We've known the Lady Amanda for so long ... and now we're all going to
lose her? It's ... not fair."
"How many times have you said that when you're confronted with death,
Bones?" Kirk asked.
McCoy gave him a grim smile. "At least ninety-five percent of the time,
Jim. But that doesn't keep me from feeling it again, each time."
"After that hospital ship relieves us here," Kirk said,
"we're heading for Vulcan."
McCoy nodded. "Good. But how are you going to justify a trip to Vulcan
with Starfleet Command?"
"Scotty has performed his usual miracle patching up the ship after Chang
used us for a skeet target," Kirk replied,
"but he told me yesterday that he's completed all the repairs he can,
working on the ship from the inside out. He said we'd have to put into
spacedock for him to finish with the structural repairs and pressure
checks. Vulcan has an excellent spacedock."
McCoy nodded, then wearily straightened his back. "No rest for the
wicked," he said. "I've got a patient to check on."
Kirk looked at him. "Could you use one more pair of unskilled hands,
Bones?"
"You bet," the doctor said. "C'mon, and I'll order you around for a
change ... "
Together, they headed for the nearest bubbletent.
"Enough, Peter, enough!" Lisa Tennant insisted, getting out of the
old-fashioned hard-backed chair and stretching her spine. "You're worse
than Rosa. I never thought I'd find anyone who could work as hard as she
did. How about some coffee?"
Peter nodded. "Sure, Lisa. Coffee's fine." He could use a cup right now.
It was nearly midnight and because of the time he'd spent here, he'd
have to pull an all-nighter to cram for his exam tomorrow. He rubbed his
face tiredly. He
wasn't eighteen anymore. Staying up all night studying would take its
toll ... and what did he have to show for it?
He'd been coming to this dingy basement room nearly every day since that
Saturday. That first day, he'd thought that he'd be able to garner
enough information to take to Starfleet Security once he got into the
KEHL files. But that Saturday, he never got near the computers. Instead,
he'd ended up helping Lisa with the technicalities of bailing out most
of the demonstrators.
He'd been right about her, too. She was interested in him, and kept him
close by her side most of the time, flirting lightly, never saying or
doing anything too forward, too aggressive. He played along in the same
vein, waiting and hoping to get access to their computers. When that
didn't happen, he'd ended up coming back the second night, and the
third. Last night, he'd finally gotten into the machines, but the only
thing she'd let him work on was a tedious reworking of the data
structures, which told him little.
He promised himself that tonight was the very last time he'd come here.
If he didn't get any information valuable enough to bring to Starfleet
Security, he'd forget his brief sojourn into the world of
cloak-and-dagger and force him self to focus on the really important
matters in his life.
Like the Kobayashi Maru.
Peter groaned at the very thought of that test, only a little more than
a week away. Just today, one of his friends had confided that the odds
against him were mounting steadily.
Peter wasn't surprised. If he had been a betting man he'd have bet
against himself, too. Was he studying the old scenarios to see how
others handled them? Was he reading up on the theory behind the test
itself, to get a handle on what the new scenario might require of him?
No, he was hanging around a subversive organization, flirting with its
leader, and coming up with nothing for all his efforts.
sandwich. "You've got to be starving," Lisa said quietly, sitting beside
him. "You've been working steadily since you got here. I'm afraid I
haven't been taking very good care of you."
"I didn't think that was your job," he replied. "As your impromptu
assistant, I thought it was my role to take care of you."
She brushed against him, and the faint scent of her perfume made his
nostrils twitch with the faintly musky, exotic odor. In the few days
he'd been associating with her, he'd found her an enigmatic person. She
was bright, sensitive, and quite intellectual. In many ways she was an
intriguing, exciting woman, not the kind of person to spout the bigoted,
paranoid nonsense she obviously believed wholeheartedly.
He thought more clearly when she wasn't quite so close to him. Finishing
his sandwich, he eased out of the chair and wandered around her small,
spare office. Curiously, he browsed the shelf of real-paper books she
had prominently displayed.
There was a mint-condition volume of Wuthering Heights, a slightly
battered edition of Have Spacesuit, Will Travel a collection of Edgar
Allan Poe's poetry, and ... He paused, staring at a slim volume perched
neatly between the others. The Diary of Anne Frank.
"It's a nice collection," Peter said softly. "Do you read them?" Unlike
his Uncle Jim, many collectors did not.
Lisa nodded proudly, coming to stand beside him. "I don't read the
volumes themselves, of course--they're much too fragile. But every book
I buy, I look it up in the library files and read it."
"That's great," Peter said, his voice low. He tried to imagine how she
could've ever read the words of Anne Frank and still become so involved
with the KEHL. "It's nice to meet someone who appreciates books."
She gave him a smile, and a spark of warmth touched her huge, obsidian
eyes. "Are you a collector, too?"
"Not exactly," Peter admitted. "But my uncle is, and I enjoy his books."
Peter hesitated, then bit the bullet. "You know, I've never gotten the
chance to ask how you got so involved with the KEHL."
Lisa showed no sign of self-consciousness as she replied,
"I haven't been a member that long, Peter. Just a few months. It's funny
... I'm a sociology student, and I know something about how groups like
this start ... Usually there's one charismatic individual--like
Induna--who founds such a group, and he or she finds followers along the
way, people who think along the same lines. But the KEHL, at least here
in San Francisco, wasn't like that at all." She glanced at him, her
black eyes earnest. "Which leads me to believe that we were just
destined to be--that it was time for us to rise and make our voices
heard."
"Have you always disliked aliens? Particularly Vulcanst' Peter was
careful to keep his tone one of polite, if casual, interest.
She frowned a little as she thought. "It's funny, Peter. Up until a few
months ago, I scarcely ever gave the matter much thought. I'd never
known an alien personally, and only met a few as casual acquaintances.
I'm from a little town in Indiana, and we don't get many
outsiders--human ones, much less extraterrestrials. I guess it was just
a subconscious decision I made back in August ... that humans evolved
on Earth, so it's our planet, and they don't have any place here."
"Do you think Earth should stay in the Federation?"
"I don't know ..." She chewed on her lower lip, hesitating.
"Since Earth is the most powerful planet in the Federation, with only
the Vulcans capable of posing a serious challenge to us, I suppose we
shouldn't dissolve the Federation until the Klingons and Romulans have
been dealt with.
As long as we can get the Vulcans out, that is."
Peter was having a difficult time staying civil. "Why?" he asked,
struggling to keep the edge out of his voice.