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  Blakely studied him with curiosity as if he, not she, were out of line.

  “Your ship, Captain Blakely. The Magellan.”

  The captain finally found her voice. “It no longer exists, Mister Kirk. That’s why I’m commandeering the Belle Reve.”

  “No. You’re not.”

  Blakely held up a small Starfleet padd, showed its screen to Kirk.

  “These are my orders,” she said. “The Belle Reve is one of the last Starfleet vessels in the Vulcan system cleared for warp. I’m to take it to Earth at once.”

  Kirk didn’t bother reading the orders. He gently but firmly pushed the padd aside.

  “I’m under orders from Admiral Janeway. And she wants me on Vulcan.”

  For the first time, Kirk saw Blakely’s expression falter. “Admiral Janeway was killed on the Sovereign…”

  Kirk hid his surprise. He’d just let slip information he’d assumed a Starfleet officer would already have. He tried to cover. “She gave me the orders before she returned to the Sovereign.”

  “Then the admiral wasn’t aware of the difficulties we’ve encountered with our warp drives.” Blakely put her hand on Kirk’s shoulder, a strangely familiar gesture. “I think we can safely say the admiral would change her orders in light of the current situation.”

  Kirk knew that was not the case, but didn’t want to jeopardize Janeway’s plans to keep her survival a secret from whatever enemy Starfleet faced.

  “I need to speak to your commander,” Kirk said.

  “My commander’s dead.”

  Kirk wondered if the woman had taken too many stress tabs. “Where did your orders come from?”

  Blakely smiled again as if Kirk were an old friend. “I need the Belle Reve.”

  Kirk had no intention of giving up his ship.

  “So do I.”

  Blakely placed her hand on Kirk’s chest, more the touch of a lover than a Starfleet officer determined to put a civilian in his place.

  “I need you,” she said. Then she grabbed the back of Kirk’s head and forced him forward, kissing him.

  Kirk instantly pushed at her, to make her step away, but her strength was—

  Inhuman.

  “No!” Kirk twisted his face away from her but could not escape her grip.

  “James, please….”

  His eyes widened in horror. He knew that voice.

  That voice still whispered to him in his dreams.

  The voice of a woman who had died five years ago at Halkan.

  Teilani…

  It was his beloved wife, mother of Joseph, who embraced him now. The Starfleet uniform of Captain Blakely evaporated like mist, leaving this creature unclothed, unthreatening, incredibly desirable in his arms.

  “I love you, James….”

  Kirk pushed and struggled but her arms drew him closer. Fingers like duranium talons twisted the back of his head, forcing him to gaze into eyes he’d known so well.

  He saw his own face, distorted in fear, reflected there.

  “And I know you love me….”

  Millimeter by millimeter, the creature with Teilani’s form, Teilani’s voice, Teilani’s scent, forced his head forward to her lips.

  “Accept…” she whispered, and her intoxicating breath was warm and sweet and stirring.

  “Norinda!” Kirk shouted, struggling to break the creature’s spell.

  Then he gasped as Teilani’s face webbed with a mesh of fine dark lines and her skin fissured along those lines into cubes and he felt the hand at the back of his neck flatten and spread.

  “Be loved,” the creature said.

  Kirk gasped for air as that face smothered him in a wave of choking darkness.

  And then there was a flash of light.

  The sting of heat.

  A familiar numbing of his fingers, arms, and legs.

  He felt himself fly backward to land jarringly on the deck.

  His face was suddenly clear. But he swatted and rubbed to get rid of the sensation the darkness had left on him, as if he had walked through a spider’s silk.

  Then he saw the darkness, separate and distinct.

  A mound of it, cubes of different sizes, slowly folding into themselves and shrinking as if melting into the deck, as phaser beams splashed over it, causing the shadows that textured it to jump and flash.

  With great effort, Kirk turned his head away from the abomination that had tried to claim him, to see a Vulcan security detail in the doorway, three of them firing phasers, a fourth rushing to his side.

  “James Kirk?” the fourth Vulcan asked. He was in a red uniform, the color of the Vulcan desert. He helped Kirk to his feet.

  “I am,” Kirk said. He could still feel his heart racing.

  The dark mound was now a powdery stain, all traces of it slowly fading.

  “How did you get here?” the Vulcan asked.

  “You beamed me in,” Kirk said indignantly.

  The Vulcan shook his head. “This is a restricted defense installation. Your beam-in was unauthorized.”

  Kirk would not accept that. “Is this installation protected by shields?”

  The Vulcan was about to answer, then stopped as he realized what Kirk was implying. “Logical” was all he said. Obviously, if Kirk had been transported aboard the space station, someone with authority had adjusted the shields to let the beam through.

  “I’ll start at the beginning,” Kirk said, then rapidly filled the Vulcan in on everything he had done since Joseph had vanished. When he reached the point at which Prefect Vorrel had contacted the Ministry of Planetary Defense, the Vulcan security officer blinked, signaling disturbance.

  “That’s when,” Kirk concluded, “I was beamed here.”

  “A moment,” the officer said. He walked over to his three companions who were continuing to take handheld sensor readings of the now unmarked deck where the dark residue had vanished.

  Kirk was not inclined to wait until the Vulcans had reached a consensus. He tapped his communicator pin. “Kirk to Belle Reve.”

  Scott responded at once. “Captain, where are ye?”

  “On a Planetary Defense space station, geostationary orbit.” Kirk didn’t like the sound of the engineer’s voice. “What’s happened, Scotty?”

  “The prefecture office was just bombed. We thought ye were in it.”

  Kirk felt off-balance. He wondered if the bomb had been meant for him. But then, why had he been allowed to be beamed out of the building?

  The answer came to him.

  Norinda wanted him alive.

  Norinda had just attempted to do to him what she had done to Spock. And if that act of dissolution was fatal, then there was no sense in allowing him to escape the bombing. She could have killed him in the prefecture office much more easily.

  That confirmed it for Kirk.

  That meant Spock was alive. Norinda herself had just confirmed it.

  The commander of the Vulcan security team returned to Kirk.

  Renewed with hope for Joseph and Spock, Kirk tapped his communicator again. “Stand by, Mister Scott.”

  The Vulcan’s face was unreadable, even for Kirk. “Your story is troubling. It implies that the security of our planetary defense and local peacekeeping organizations has been compromised.”

  “I agree,” Kirk said.

  The Vulcan glanced back at the deck. “And the phenomenon that we have witnessed…”

  “Is known to Starfleet,” Kirk said. “And I have no doubt it’s got something to do with the kidnapping of my child.”

  The Vulcan considered his next words, and the longer the silence lasted, the more Kirk knew he wasn’t going to like what the Vulcan had to say.

  “As a civilian, you cannot remain on this station.”

  “I understand,” Kirk said. “If you beam me back to the Gateway, I– “

  “No,” the Vulcan interrupted. “You cannot return to Vulcan, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “A state of emergency exis
ts. As an alien, you must apply for a landing visa through your embassy.”

  Kirk felt his face flush with anger. “My son is on Vulcan. I will not leave without him.”

  The Vulcan raised a finger and the other three members of his team were instantly at his side.

  “Mister Kirk, given the capabilities of my world’s peacekeeping agencies, it is not logical for a criminal organization to keep a kidnapping victim on Vulcan. Therefore, your son is not on Vulcan.”

  For a few moments, Kirk’s mind raced as he weighed what he would need to do to get past the security team. But just as quickly he decided that the effort wouldn’t be worth it. Even if he managed to drop all four Vulcans, there would be more in the corridors outside the transporter depot.

  The wiser course was to return to the Belle Reve and, from there, to make his way back to the planet below.

  If Norinda wanted him to return to Earth, then more than ever, Kirk knew, for Joseph’s sake he must remain on Vulcan.

  He felt certain even Spock would approve of his logic.

  14

  THE GATEWAY, VULCAN

  STARDATE 58564.5

  It took less than twelve hours for Kirk to return to Vulcan.

  The Belle Reve maintained a full data library of Starfleet’s most secure codes, including those required for high-level communications with Vulcan authorities. It also carried a simple device that, when worn like a combadge, overwrote the individual Starfleet ID code that was transmitted with each personnel transport.

  Kirk applied for a landing visa under the name of Lieutenant Roger Ramey of the Starship Sovereign, and the Belle Reve’s computers were able to surreptitiously upload Lieutenant Ramey’s service record into the memory banks of Vulcan’s Joint Operations Center.

  Kirk doubted any Vulcan would personally review his application-the entire system was automated and, under present circumstances, operating at the limits of its capacity. He beamed from his ship to an orbital hotel where some of the survivors from the Sovereign and other stricken vessels were being quartered. From there, with Lieutenant Ramey’s ID, he had his request to beam to Vulcan approved without comment.

  Kirk had been tempted to try to arrange for a second visa, so that Janeway’s Emergency Medical Hologram could accompany him. But the Doctor’s holographic emitter would likely be flagged as suspect technology during transport, and Kirk was determined not to do anything that might attract attention. Instead, the Doctor remained on the Belle Reve with Scott and McCoy, standing by to retrieve Kirk the moment Kirk felt retrieval was necessary.

  Thus, alone, Kirk beamed into the central transport hub at the Gateway, and at once made his way to the only local contact he believed he could trust not to report his presence.

  Scholar T’Vrel.

  As Kirk had expected, T’Vrel’s s’url was a simple compound, completely unremarkable, except for its location in the oldest part of the ancient desert community. Supposedly, several of its buildings had existed in Surak’s day, though Kirk doubted any structure from that time had survived the battles that had raged in this location.

  Wide stone steps, heavily worn by centuries of grit and dust and the sandals of thousands of pilgrims, led up from the street to an unornamented portico of stone blocks. The blocks were deep desert red, a peaceful color to Vulcans, Kirk knew. It spoke to them of the stunning vistas of their desert regions, and of the absence of blood.

  Kirk walked up the center of the steps, his coarse-woven cloak wrapped about him, his hood pulled forward, not for cooling, only for anonymity.

  As he reached the top step, he looked into a wide courtyard of wind-smoothed stone slabs, ringed by a series of single-story buildings, each with a wide sheltered walkway serving as a porch, and as a way to move from one building to another in shade. But for now, it was nearing sunset, and the orange Vulcan sun cast long shadows from the horizon. Shade wasn’t necessary.

  A solitary Vulcan, dressed in brown and tan robes identical to those T’Vrel had worn, swept the sand from a few stone slabs with precise, methodical movements. The impossibility of ever completing that task across the entire courtyard made Kirk think the exercise was more one of meditation than of groundskeeping.

  The soft glow of candlelight flickered through many of the open windows of the surrounding buildings. Kirk paused, trying to see if one building seemed more likely than another to be a main hall where he could inquire after T’Vrel.

  In those few moments, one of the nearest doors opened and a second Surakian walked out, not slowly, not rushing, but with purpose.

  The Surakian lifted her hooded head as she neared Kirk and, from what little Kirk could see, she was young, no more than twenty standard years. It is only after Vulcans reach full adulthood that their chronological ages become difficult to reconcile with their appearance.

  Because the young Vulcan’s robes were colored with a single shade of brown, and not two like T’Vrel’s, Kirk judged she was a novice. Still, she might know where T’Vrel could be found.

  “Good evening,” Kirk said as the young woman came within speaking distance.

  Her eyes met Kirk’s with surprising intensity, and in a soft whisper, she said, “You’re not safe here-follow me at once.”

  There was no time for Kirk to reason his way through to a decision. No chance to apply logic to an assessment of how likely a trap might be. Instead, acting solely on instinct, he changed direction in midstride and followed the novice back down the stone steps, into the sunset shadows of the street.

  The cloaked figure didn’t look back to see if Kirk followed. Kirk understood; her Vulcan ears would have answered that question upon hearing Kirk’s footsteps stay close.

  For fifteen minutes they proceeded on a circuitous route that Kirk assumed was designed to expose anyone who might be following them. It was little defense against orbital scans or even a distant pursuer with a tricorder, but Kirk guessed the young woman was employing other defenses against those techniques. Simply ignoring them wouldn’t be logical.

  At last, night fell and the Vulcan stars came out, much fewer than seen in the desert skies of Earth due to the brightness of the two small companions to this world’s primary star. Eridani B and C, so distant they were little more than points of light, still were bright enough and close enough together this time of year to cast faint double shadows between the widely spaced streetglows illuminating the empty thoroughfares.

  Eventually, the young woman turned in to an alleyway, and when Kirk followed, he found her waiting for him, her face still half obscured by her hood.

  “Did T’Vrel send you?” Kirk asked.

  Her answer surprised him.

  “No. She expected you. But so did others. There was concern you would be captured and we had no clear plan to prevent it.”

  “Captured by whom?” Kirk asked.

  “I think you know.” She turned toward an unmarked door in the side of what appeared to be a warehouse. “In here.”

  Beyond the door was a narrow corridor. At the end of the corridor, another door. As to what lay beyond that, on any other occasion Kirk might have laughed at the incongruous and very un-Vulcan scene before him.

  It was a bar, old and run-down. Mostly for alien visitors, it seemed, but with many Vulcans, both as customers and staff.

  The light level was low. Most illumination came from phosphorescent channels in the floor, evoking the living lights of Vulcan’s T’Kallaron caves.

  The sound in the bar was a gentle rush of a dozen alien tongues, too many for the universal translator in Kirk’s combadge to make sense of all at once.

  But most notable of all, there was a faint scent to the air that brought back an intense memory for Kirk. A mixture of burnt cinnamon and an Andorian spice like anise, blended with the sweat of a dozen other species and the smoke from an open grill that burned Vulcan stonewood.

  The first time Kirk had experienced that tantalizing melange from far-off worlds had been in San Francisco, lifetimes ago, before he had ent
ered the Academy.

  Kirk closed his eyes, captured the moment and the memory, recalled his dream.

  Do I have your attention?

  He was getting closer to Spock. He could feel it.

  “This way,” the Surakian prompted. The young woman’s words thrust Kirk back into the present.

  He followed the novice to a small table in a corner, apart from the others.

  Two battered wooden chairs were leaning against the table, telling Kirk that it had been set aside for them. From under the protective shadow of his hood, Kirk glanced around but saw no one paying any attention to either him or his guide.

  They sat down. The young woman pulled off her hood.

  Kirk was surprised that her head wasn’t shaved.

  Even more surprising, she wasn’t even Vulcan.

  She read the question in Kirk’s eyes.

  “Correct,” she said. “I’m Romulan. But as far as deception goes, you’re not Lieutenant Ramey. So we’re even.”

  Kirk was both impressed and concerned by the woman’s knowledge.

  “My name’s Marinta,” the Romulan said.

  “I take it you know who I am.”

  Marinta nodded once. “And I know both reasons why you’re here. To find your son. And Ambassador Spock.”

  Again, Kirk looked around the dimly lit bar but caught no one paying particular attention to the two robed figures in the corner.

  “What else?” Kirk asked. He knew he was being cautious, perhaps overly so. But there was still a chance that Marinta had led him into a trap rather than away from one.

  She reached into her robes, brought out a small padd. At least, Kirk thought it was a padd, though it had no display screen.

  Marinta slipped a slender transparent cylinder from the device, handed it to Kirk.

  “Place this on your eyes.”

  Kirk saw a small indentation on the cylinder, held it to the bridge of his nose.

  The cylinder remained in place, a narrow tube of clear material poised before both eyes like impossibly thin spectacles.