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  "In my Universe, Coridan is a lifeless world."

  The Mirror-Spock looked across the fire to Kirk, and it was as if he stared out from the fires of hell.

  "Punishment for those citizens of Coridan who conspired with the Orions. An unasked-for gesture of good faith from my Captain Kirk, to show how valued my alliance with him was. It was many years before I could control his precipitous inclination to act on instinct, rather than careful thought."

  "He destroyed a world . . ." Kirk said.

  "It was not the first," the Mirror-Spock said, "nor the last. . . ."

  Books by William Shatner

  TekWar

  TekLords

  TekLab

  Tek Vengeance

  Tek Secret

  Tek Power

  Tek Money

  Tek Kill

  Man o' War

  Believe (with Michael Tobias)

  Star Trek Memories

  Star Trek Movie Memories

  The Ashes of Eden (with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens)

  The Return (with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens)

  Avenger (with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens)

  Spectre (with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens)

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

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  Copyright © 1998 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

  Originally Published in hardcover in 1998 by Pocket Books

  STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of

  Paramount Pictures.

  This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN:0-7434-5408-1

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  About the Author

  About the Collaborators

  Star Trek has been good to me:

  Fame, Fortune, Fantasy.

  But most of all, Friendship,

  My Friend, Leonard, my best man, the best man.

  And the essential Southern gentleman, my Friend,

  DeForrest And his devoted, loving, and lovely wife, Carolyn.

  I dedicate this book to them and my delight in their friendship.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Gar and Judy Reeves-Stevens are incredible. Their work speaks for itself. Their mastery of the legends of Star Trek is incomparable.

  To John Ordover, Margaret Clark, and Gina Centrello for their expertise.

  PROLOGUE

  "He's still alive," the Vulcan said.

  Though Kate heard the Vulcan's words, she didn't understand their significance. She leaned forward across the small table in the bar on Deep Space Nine. Some huge alien with a drooping face like a shriveled prune had just won a triple Dabo. He was making so much noise by the gaming table that normal conversation was impossible.

  A nervous Ferengi scampered out from behind the bar, pushing his way through the noisy crowd, arms waving. "Morn! Morn! Put her down!"

  The alien, Morn presumably, was performing some type of victory dance with a Dabo girl. As he spun her around in his embrace, her feet no longer touched the floor and she was precariously close to losing what little there was of her outfit.

  With all eyes and other sensing organs in the bar on the dancing Morn, the Vulcan took advantage of the distraction to slip a small padd across the table to her human companion.

  Kate palmed the flat device, cupped her hand around its miniature display, and activated it. She gasped as she recognized the face that appeared. The hatred that sprang to life within her was like a physical blow.

  "James Tiberius Kirk," the Vulcan whispered. She kept one hand—her real one—up by her face, half-covering her mouth. She was young, no more than twenty, Kate knew, but her eyes were older. Where she and the Vulcan came from, everyone's eyes were older.

  "When was this image recorded?"

  "A year ago," the Vulcan said. "During the virogen crisis, Kirk was arrested by port authorities at Vulcan. This is from a magistrate's hearing."

  Instantly, Kate did the math. Kirk's birthdate, in the Earth year 2233, would be forever burned into her memory. "T'Val, that's impossible. This man is no more than sixty at most. But Kirk . . . today, he'd be . . . a hundred and forty-two years old."

  A second Ferengi, in a Bajoran uniform, now joined the nervous one, and both took the place of the Dabo girl in Morn's arms. The lumbering alien was spinning the two Ferengi around as he hopped lightly from one foot to the other while bleating out a tuneless series of notes that sounded more like the mating call of a Yridian yak than the song of a sentient being.

  The Vulcan, T'Val, sipped her water, using the moment to glance around the bar. "Eighty-two years ago, Kirk was presumed lost during the maiden voyage of a new starship from Earth. But in actuality, he was caught in a nonlinear temporal continuum."

  Kate frowned. "I don't understand what that is," she said, staring once again at the monster on the padd display.

  T'Val allowed a momentary flicker of shared confusion to play across her features, so subtle that none but another Vulcan, or Kate, would notice. Everyone else would be distracted by the flat red blister of a disruptor scar etched across the olive skin of her forehead. "Do not be troubled. No one does. But four years ago, Kirk was discovered within that continuum by . . ." T'Val's eyes scanned the nearby tables. Kate and she were in a comer, almost beneath the stairway that led to the second level and the notorious holosuites, but the Vulcan's attitude clearly stated that it paid to take no chances. T'Val dropped her voice to an even softer whisper. ". . . Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard."

  Kate's eyes widened. How could such a thing be possible? Even here?

  T'Val continued. "After that, Kirk was once again thought to have perished almost immediately on the backwater planet where Picard retrieved him. But a year later, to everyone's surprise, he returned. A Romulan faction had used Borg technology to . . ." The Vulcan searched for the correct terminology.

  "Bring him back to life?" Kate said.

  But T'Val shook her head. "Logic dictates that because he lives today, he did not die then. It is more accurate to think of Kirk experiencing a momentary interruption in normal biological processes."

  Kate had heard none of this before. "And then what?"

  T'Val steepled her fingers, the
fingertips of her natural right hand almost but not quite aligned with the crude bionic structure that served as her left hand. "And then, most of what followed is not part of the official record. It must be considered that, perhaps, Starfleet would prefer to keep the knowledge of Kirk's return a secret. Unofficially, it is known that two years ago, in a classified operation, Starfleet prevented a Borg-Romulan alliance from invading the Federation. They did so by undertaking an unprecedented preemptive assault on what they believed might have been the Borg homeworld. Last year, the Borg response to that assault was the launch of a desperate, single-ship attack on Earth in which, unconfirmed reports suggest, the Borg created a chronometric passage to Earth's past, and attempted to change that planet's history."

  Her mind swimming with all she was learning, Kate sat back in her chair and watched as Morn was led from the bar by a security officer, also in a Bajoran uniform, who bore a strangely planed face, as if he were a sculpture half-completed. She was surprised to see the nervous Ferengi pat Morn on the back. The gesture seemed one of support, yet Kate saw its true intent as it diverted attention from the Ferengi's other hand slipping into the hulking alien's belt and reappearing with a bar of latinum.

  Kate was not the only one to have noticed the maneuver. The smooth-faced security officer stopped, faced the Ferengi, and held out his hand with an expression of tired disgust.

  The Ferengi feigned innocence for a few moments as he muttered something about "damages." Then, looking equally disgusted with the security officer and the universe in general, he shrugged and surrendered the latinum.

  He doesn't know how good he's got it here, Kate thought. She looked around the bar. None of these people do.

  "And Kirk survived all of that?" Kate asked.

  "He was not involved in defending Earth from the Borg. But last year, again under strict conditions of secrecy, he played a key role in resolving the virogen crisis."

  "And now . . . ?"

  "And now, as best our sources can ascertain, he has withdrawn from all contact with the universe at large. Not even the war with the Dominion has drawn him out. In effect, he has retired. To a world named Chal."

  Kate was intrigued. "A Klingon word?"

  The Vulcan nodded. " 'Heaven.' The one place where no one would expect to find Kirk. The colony on Chal was established more than a century ago by the Klingons and Romulans. A military installation to house a doomsday weapon, in case the empires lost what they expected to be an all-out war with the Federation."

  Kate rubbed at a bead of moisture on the table. It was still a novelty to sit in a public place and not be afraid of being arbitrarily arrested. It was as refreshing as the new civilian clothes she wore, and the room she had rented in the habitat ring, a room she didn't have to share and where she could stand in the sonic shower all day if she wanted. The slight inconvenience of cutting her hair to bristle-short length and dyeing it flame red, as part of a disguise, was an inconsequential price to pay. She was certain that out of uniform, no one would recognize her, especially where they did not expect to find her. "If Kirk's retired, what makes our sources think that he has access to the material we need?"

  "Starfleet honors its heroes."

  Kate almost gagged at the term. "Hero? Kirk?"

  "Remember where you are," T'Val cautioned her. " Following its standard policy to support personnel that have been temporally translocated, Starfleet stands ready to offer any aid and assistance to the famous Captain Kirk, at any time. Last year, he was even offered a position on the science vessel Tobias. He refused, but the Fleet would welcome a chance to reclaim one of its own, especially one with so much . . . experience."

  Kate nodded, a sour smile on her face. All around her and T'Val, the bar was returning to normal. Or, at least, as normal as any bar run by a Ferengi could be. "If Kirk is such a hero, if he's held in such high regard, why don't we just ask him for what we need?"

  The Vulcan raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Given all you know," she said, "would you trust him?"

  "Hell, no. How could I?"

  "Precisely. Thus, we must place Kirk in a situation in which he will have no choice but to accept the sincerity of our request, and the inevitability of his compliance."

  Kate studied the image on the padd. Automatic waves of revulsion swept through her. "He was never the sort to respond to threats."

  "Threats, no," the Vulcan agreed. "But logic, yes."

  "T'Val, whatever else he is, Kirk is no Vulcan. What if logic doesn't work?"

  The Vulcan's face became an impassive slate. "Logic always works. And since total secrecy—for ourselves and our activities—must be maintained, if James T. Kirk does not acquiesce to our requests, then we must do what logic demands."

  Kate didn't need to have it explained to her. "We kill him."

  "Precisely," the Vulcan said. "James Kirk has retired. For whatever reason, he has decided he has nothing else to contribute to this universe. But he can still serve us. And, if he will not, then he has no reason to live."

  "I could have told you that." Kate stared down at the image of Kirk on the padd. "In a way, I hope he doesn't cooperate. I think I would enjoy killing him."

  For the briefest of instants, T'Val's face was transformed by a remarkable expression of emotion—unfiltered hate and anger. "I understand," she said, and that emotion was in her voice as well as her eyes. Then, just as quickly, she regained her composure.

  Kate held her finger above the padd's delete control, hesitated for just a moment of sweet anticipation, then pressed it. James T. Kirk was wiped from the device's memory as if he had been no more than a dream. Or a nightmare.

  Erasing the detested image brought fierce pleasure. No question about it. For all he had done to her and her people, she would relish killing Kirk. She turned to her companion.

  "Maybe after he's helped us," she said to T'Val, "you and I can kill him anyway."

  The Vulcan's gaze was fixed on the blank padd display, and even Kate could read the un-Vulcanlike desire for revenge simmering beneath the surface. "Yes, we could," T'Val said. "One way or another, James Tiberius Kirk must die."

  ONE

  His shadow stretched before him in the blazing light of Chal's twin suns, but James T. Kirk stood alone.

  For a year he had known that this day would come. This final moment when all he had worked for on this world would end in victory, or in final, ignominious defeat.

  All or nothing.

  It was the way Kirk liked it.

  The hot suns of Chal burned at his back. But he did not let their assault deter him from what he must do—

  Now!

  With a sharp intake of breath, Kirk wrapped his arms around the wrinkled gray covering of his enemy—the beast that had relentlessly mocked him all through the year.

  His muscles strained. Sweat poured from him.

  His vision blurred with the effort.

  All or nothing.

  And then—

  Movement!

  He was doing it! He dug in his feet, struggled as he had never struggled in his life until—

  —with a startling crack a band of fire shot through his lower back like a phaser burst and he collapsed to the soil of Chal, gasping in agony.

  James T. Kirk's back had gone out.

  Again.

  And the malevolent tree stump, that last gnarled mound of deadwood that was the final obstacle in the field he had cleared, the field where his new house would be built and his garden planted, remained in place. Mocking him still.

  Kirk tried to sit up.

  His back made him reconsider the idea.

  He lay there for an endless time, finger tapping the soil. The pain did not bother him so much as the forced inactivity. Where's Dr. McCoy when you need him? he thought.

  Then a shadow fell over him. A very short shadow. The sound of its owner's approach so silent he had been taken by surprise.

  "What'sa matter, mister? You having a nap?"

  Kirk raised his hand to shield hi
s eyes as he stared up at . . . The child's name escaped him.

  "Who are you?" Kirk asked.

  The young boy, no more than six, put one finger up his nose as if performing exploratory brain surgery on himself. "Memlon."

  Kirk remembered him now. Memlon lived two farms along the road to City. Like most of the people of Chal, his features combined a suggestion of Klingon head ridges with a slight Romulan point to his ears. Like those of most children everywhere, the knees of his white trousers were smudged with grass, his cheeks with dirt.

  "Do your parents know where you are?" Kirk asked, hoping to send him on his way.

  "Uh-huh." Memlon nodded slowly as he withdrew his finger from his nose to hold up his right hand to show Kirk his subspace locator bracelet, a civilian spin-off from Starfleet's communicators.

  "Then isn't there something else you should be doing?"

  Memlon wiped his finger on the white tunic he wore. The tunic showed evidence of previous similar maneuvers. The child shook his head. "What are you doing?"

  Kirk sighed as he realized that his back still wasn't going to let him sit up. So he rolled onto his side and pushed himself into a sitting position . . . slowly. "I am trying . . . to remove that tree stump . . . from what will be my new dining room,"

  Memlon studied the twisted stump with the practiced eye of a six-year-old who had all the answers. "Don't you got a Phaser?"

  "No. I don't . . . got a phaser."

  "My mom has a phaser." Memion drew a bead on the stump with his finger, then did a remarkably realistic imitation of a phaser's transonic squeal, followed by a less-thanrealistic "Pow!" The child looked back at Kirk with an expression of pity. "You want me to ask my mom if you can borrow it?"

  "No. I am going to take that stump out by myself. With my own hands."

  The child stared at Kirk as if the adult had suddenly begun speaking in an ancient Vulcan dialect. "Why?"