Crucible: Kirk Read online

  And suddenly he knew what had been planned by his alter ego, who then confirmed it: “The Guardian of Forever.”

  Kirk could see it. The Guardian’s remote location, during a time prior to when it had been discovered, would allow him to move stealthily through time. Except that he foresaw a problem. “I’ll need to enter the Guardian in twenty-two ninety-three,” he said. “But—”

  “I know,” the other Kirk responded. “The Klingons.”

  On the bridge of the Enterprise, Kirk peered from his command chair at the main viewscreen. The view astern showed Starfleet’s now-empty Einstein research station receding into the distance as the ship sped away from it. A central, compacted sphere formed the main body of the facility, on the top and bottom of which extended a tapering spire. Its hull glistened blue, as though constructed of colored crystal. An arc of the brown planet about which it orbited showed in a corner of the screen.

  Visible beyond the station, the gray shapes of the Klingon vessels Goren and Gr’oth continued their pursuit of the Enterprise. Each had a bulbous control section at the forward end of a long, narrow neck, which extended from an angular main body, on either side of which hung its shortened engine structures. The two warships would pass close to the Einstein station.

  “Ten seconds,” announced Lieutenant Haines from the sciences station. Several minutes ago, Spock had gone down to engineering to assist Scotty in restoring the weapons and the shields. “Five seconds.”

  “Now, Chekov!” Kirk ordered, leaning forward in his chair. At the navigation console, the ensign worked his controls. On the main viewer, Kirk watched as the Einstein station blew apart. The two Klingon vessels vanished for a moment behind the fiery explosion, which immediately began to die in the vacuum of space.

  Kirk waited to see if his actions had brought his crew any closer to safety. The irony did not elude him that on the voyage back to Earth, the ship and crew might not make it on this, the last leg of their five-year journey. He held his breath as he gazed at the viewscreen.

  The Goren emerged from the fading conflagration in pieces, the forward control section no longer attached to the main body of the ship. The two hulls spun through space, until they each exploded. In almost no time at all, nothing remained of the warship.

  “Got him!” Chekov said, throwing a clenched fist into the air.

  “Easy, mister, we’re not out of this yet,” Kirk told him. In mute testimony of that fact, the Gr’oth became visible on the viewer, still pursuing the Enterprise. But then blue bolts of energy suddenly erupted on the hull of the Klingon vessel.

  “A piece of the station penetrated the Gr’oth’s hull,” Haines said, and Kirk saw part of one spire jutting from beneath the main body of the ship. “I’m reading heavy casualties. They’ve lost most of their systems, including shields and weapons, and their life support is faltering.”

  “They’re now drifting,” Lieutenant Sulu said from the helm. On the viewscreen, the Gr’oth glided askew of its flight path. Clearly, the Enterprise and its crew had won the battle.

  “Sulu, reverse course,” Kirk said. “Close to within transporter range.” With no weapons and no shields, with life support failing, the crew of the Gr’oth had transformed from dangerous attackers into survivors who needed rescue. He leaned in over the intercom on the arm of his chair, the channel still open from a few moments ago. “Mister Kyle, have our guests escorted to quarters—” Just before the destruction of the Einstein station, its seventeen personnel had been beamed aboard. “—and then have security report to the cargo transporter. We may be taking on some prisoners.”

  “Aye, sir,” Kyle said.

  “Kirk out.” He pushed a button beside the intercom, closing the channel.

  “Captain,” Lieutenant Uhura said from the communications station, “we’re being hailed.”

  Kirk felt both frustration and anger swelling within him. “Now they want to talk,” he said. If the Klingons had been willing to do so before beginning their attack, then all of this—the destruction of the Starfleet vessels Minerva and Clemson, of the Einstein facility, and of the Klingon ships Rikkon, Vintahg, and Goren, along with the loss of hundreds of lives—could have been averted. “Put them on screen, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Aye, sir,” Uhura said.

  On the main viewer, the image of the wounded Gr’oth disappeared, replaced by the interior of its bridge. Standing amid clouds of smoke colored green by their alert lighting, the Klingon commander glared forward. Kirk recognized him at once, not just from Starfleet security briefs, but from an encounter he’d had with him a couple of years ago aboard Deep Space Station K-7. The executive officer of the Gr’oth back then, Korax now commanded the ship. He had dark brown hair and a goatee, and he wore the regulation black and gold uniform of the Klingon Imperial Fleet.

  “Kirk,” Korax said loudly. He smiled at the same time that his eyes seemed filled with hatred. “You managed to conduct a battle without the help of the Organians.” The issue of the powerful incorporeal beings had concerned and confused Starfleet Command, Kirk knew. They had prevented a war between the Federation and the Klingons three years ago, essentially forcing a ceasefire upon both parties, but they had taken no action since then, even when conflicts such as this one had broken out. “Could it be because the Organians don’t approve of Starfleet attempting to build a new weapon to use against us?”

  Before her ship had been rammed and obliterated by the Vintahg, Captain Chelsea of the U.S.S. Clemson had warned Kirk that this had been the Klingons’ claim, their justification for sending a quartet of warships here. The charge had no merit, but he also knew that the Klingons must have detected the waves of time displacement emanating from the nearby planet. Although Starfleet had not created the Guardian of Forever, nor intended to employ it as a weapon, Kirk could not dispute its potential use in such a manner. Still, he said, “There is no weapon, Korax.”

  “Then you won’t mind me sending a landing party down to the planet to investigate for myself,” the Klingon said.

  “Not at all,” Kirk told him, bluffing. He could afford the pretense. With most of the Gr’oth’s systems down, the heavy casualties it had sustained, and its life support on the verge of failure, the Klingon crew would be fortunate simply to escape the current circumstances with their lives.

  Amazingly, Korax actually laughed. “Funny,” he said. “The captains of the Minerva and the Clemson didn’t seem quite so accommodating as you.”

  Though he did not reveal the fact, just the mention of the two Starfleet vessels that had been lost to the Klingons enraged Kirk. To cover his fury, he stood from his command chair. “I’m an accommodating fellow,” he said equably. “Let us transport your crew aboard the Enterprise before your life support fails.”

  Korax threw his head back and laughed loudly. “You are an amusing fellow, Kirk,” he said when he’d finished. “I look forward to bringing your ship back to the Empire. A minor trophy, to be sure, but still a trophy.”

  In Kirk’s head, a red alert sounded. Along with what Korax had just said came the realization that, although the Gr’oth had lost weapons and shields and many other systems, its transporters might still be functioning. In that instant, aware that his own ship’s shields remained down, Kirk knew that Korax meant to board the Enterprise. “Uhura!” he called. The lieutenant immediately cut communications with the Gr’oth, and the image of the enemy vessel floating through space returned to the main viewscreen. “Chekov, fire torpedoes!”

  The ensign operated his controls, to no effect. “Captain, weapons are all offline.”

  Damn! “Clear the bridge!” Kirk ordered. Korax would send a boarding party here and to engineering first, he knew. He looked around and saw Haines rising from her position at the sciences station, Uhura from communications, and Lieutenant Leslie from the primary engineering console, but Sulu and Chekov still sat at their posts. “Now!” he yelled, and the two men finally moved. Kirk waited for the young ensign to pass him, then fo
llowed him up the steps to the outer section of the bridge.

  By the time Kirk arrived at the turbolift, the entire bridge crew had entered before him. As he himself stepped inside the car, he saw Sulu’s eyes widen, the lieutenant peering past him, back onto the bridge. Kirk guessed in that moment that the Klingons had begun to materialize behind him. He reached for the lift’s activation wand, but Leslie already had his hand on it. “Deck two,” the lieutenant said. Kirk expected a disruptor bolt to blast him in two at any moment, but then the doors squeaked closed behind him. As the turbolift started to descend, he realized that they’d actually made it.

  And then an explosion rocked the lift, knocking it sideways. Kirk hurtled forward, raising his arms to protect not just himself, but his crewmates. His head struck the side of the lift, and then—

  Everything went dark.

  Kirk sat in an easy chair, a hardcover novel—the twenty-first-century classic Renaissance and Blues—open on his lap. He’d read the same sentence half a dozen times and now decided to give up altogether. So many thoughts filled his head, though one image in particular kept returning to his mind.

  After closing the book, Kirk reached forward and set it atop the bed, then rose and crossed the quarters that Commodore Stocker had assigned him here at Starbase 10. Kirk had been released from the station’s infirmary only this morning, after spending sixteen days there in recovery. The explosion that had demolished the Enterprise bridge and killed the members of a Klingon boarding party had sent the turbolift plunging down its shaft until it had become wedged between decks. All six members of the bridge crew had survived, though Kirk had struck his head and fallen into a coma. During the three days he’d remained unconscious, Scotty and his engineering crew had repaired the ship enough to get it back to base.

  When Kirk had finally left Starbase 10’s infirmary this morning, Bones had accompanied him here, to these guest quarters. Later, Spock had arrived with Commodore Stocker to discuss with him all that had happened during and after the Enterprise’s battle with the Klingons. They hadn’t stayed long, promising to return tomorrow after he’d gotten some rest. Spock had seemed oddly reticent to Kirk, but he simply ascribed that to all that his first officer and the rest of the crew had recently endured, perhaps an indication of posttraumatic stress. He imagined that even Vulcans—and particularly half-Vulcans—might not be immune to such disorders.

  Kirk reached the computer terminal on the far side of his quarters and sat down before it. Of all that Spock and Stocker had revealed to him today, one thing continued to come back to him. He’d watched with them the visual recording made by the security team aboard the Enterprise shuttlecraft Kepler, and what it had showed deeply disturbed him. He knew that he had no real reason to view it again now, but he found that he couldn’t stop himself.

  He worked the terminal console, providing the computer with his security clearance and a request for the Kepler recording. After a moment, the display filled with a frozen split-screen image. On the left, an aerial view showed the Guardian of Forever, standing alone on a vast, broken plain. The irregular, coppery ring stood as he’d always seen it, a strange and inexplicable alien object of great power and potential. Fractured columns and other archeological artifacts littered the ground around it, but since he and the crew of the Enterprise had discovered the place three years ago, the landscape had changed, even if the Guardian had not. When he had first gone there, mounds and walls of rock had surrounded the time vortex, and in the distance, the ruins of a long-dead civilization had provided an eerie backdrop.

  After the Enterprise’s initial visit to the world of the Guardian, Starfleet had attempted to construct a research facility there. All such efforts, even those made on the other side of the planet, had failed, wrecked by violent seisms that had altered the landscape. Ruins had been buried, the ground had cracked open in places, rock formations had toppled. The Guardian itself had refused to confirm or deny any part in producing the earthquakes, but Starfleet had believed it responsible, unwilling to allow any construction on the planet’s surface. As a result, the Einstein research station had been built in orbit.

  On the right side of the computer display, the Klingon vessel Gr’oth hung frozen within the planet’s atmosphere, the forward edges of its hull blazing red from the friction with the air. While Spock and Scotty and the rest of the crew had fought to fend off Klingon boarders in main engineering, and then had worked to repair the Enterprise, Korax had done this. Kirk raised his hand and touched a blinking green button on the computer panel. The recording began to play on the monitor.

  Kirk watched as the Klingon battle cruiser dived toward the surface—toward the Guardian. Seconds passed, and the glowing sections of the Gr’oth’s hull grew hotter still, shifting from red to white. Finally, the D7 warship appeared on the left side of the monitor, its body obstructing the view of the Guardian as the ship raced toward the alien object.

  The Gr’oth crashed directly into the Guardian of Forever. The split-screen ended, replaced by a single view. The display dimmed as a brilliant fireball burst from the point of impact. A huge mushroom-shaped cloud rose at great speed, reaching high into the sky.

  Kirk touched another control, and the recording skipped ahead to its end. He halted the image there and beheld an enormous crater carved out of the ground where once the Guardian of Forever had stood. Kirk saw no signs of either the Gr’oth or the Guardian, but clearly both had been vaporized by the great heat of the blast. Nothing could have survived the explosion.

  For a long time, Kirk sat and stared at the devastation. When he and his crew had discovered the Guardian, he had been awed by its power and abilities and enraptured by the amazing possibilities it offered. But after chasing McCoy through it and back into time, the vortex had become a symbol of profound pain for him, a reminder that the best part of his life had come and gone and would never return.

  Now, as he gazed at the image of the ruined landscape, at the place from which the Guardian of Forever had delivered to him the love of his life and then stripped her away from him, he felt terrible anguish. Somehow, it was as though he had lost Edith all over again.

  EIGHT

  1930

  In the encompassing darkness carried in with the deep of night, Kirk could have lain awake and fixated on the burden of his responsibilities, could have intentionally eluded sleep in order to lament the unthinkable possibility that Spock had delivered to him four days ago. He could have done those things, just as he had in nights past, but he didn’t. Instead, he found the will to drift above his fatigue and his concerns, concentrating now on the warmth of Edith’s bare form lying against his own, on the relaxed cadence of her breathing, on the now-musky scent of her flesh. In these perfect moments, he shut out the rest of the universe.

  Just a few minutes ago, Edith had reached away from him to switch off the lamp on the nightstand. Then she’d rolled back over to him, and he’d enfolded her in his embrace. He held her now, his arms encircling her as though they’d been designed specifically for that purpose.

  In the twenty-five days since he and Spock had arrived in Earth’s past, Kirk had attempted to resist the feelings that had begun to develop within him from the first instant that Edith Keeler had walked into his life. It made no sense for him to fall in love with a woman with whom he could have no possible future. Whether or not her death would be required in order to preserve the timeline, as Spock had suggested might be the case, Kirk intended to right the flow of history, after which he and his first officer would return to their own time in the twenty-third century. At that point, Edith would necessarily be gone from his life forever.

  But even though he had tried to keep a rein on his emotions, he’d failed completely. With a rapidity he almost couldn’t believe, he had fallen for Edith, and day by day, even hour by hour, his love for her had grown deeper and deeper. He found her beauty, both within and without, singular. From virtually the moment he’d first seen Edith, descending the wooden stairs into th
e basement of the 21st Street Mission, he had been taken with her—with her dark hair and eyes, her delicate features and pearlescent skin, her quiet confidence and certain, almost regal bearing.

  When the two of them had met, Kirk could not possibly have known how similarly they viewed life. But in a world beset by wars, by disease, by poverty and starvation, Edith somehow possessed the soul to gaze up at the stars and see the same things that Kirk did: a better tomorrow, an advanced humanity, hope, wonder. Edith perceived a positive future she did not simply long for, but one she worked to bring about as best she could. Where Kirk traveled the galaxy seeking out new knowledge, encountering new species, mediating disputes, keeping the peace, Edith fed the poor, with food for their bodies and a great vision for their minds.

  You see the same things that I do, Edith had said earlier, and he did. He always had, from far back in his life. When he’d been a boy, his family had sometimes taken walks at night out on the farm in Iowa. Sometimes his mother had gone, sometimes his brother, but most often it had been just Kirk and his father. They’d gazed together at the stars and seen the future—Jim’s future, mankind’s, the universe’s.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Edith said, her words quiet and soft in the darkness.

  “I was just thinking about my father,” he said, the ease with which he spoke surprising him. While his parents had greatly influenced his life, always fostering and supporting his dreams of space exploration, he almost never spoke of them to anybody. His mother’s death from disease when Kirk had been just nine years old had left him heartbroken and traumatized, and the day just two years later, when he’d found his father’s lifeless body out in the fields one summer afternoon, had hardened him. Afterward, he had more or less sealed off that part of his life, not only not speaking of his parents after that, but pushing away any recollections of them.