STAR TREK - TOS - Ashes Of Eden

Star Trek - TOS - Ashes Of Eden

PROLOGUE

Seventy-eight years after history reported him dead, James T. Kirk's journey had come to an end.

He was going home.

For the final time.

On a mountain slope, far above the simple cairn o frocks that was Kirk g grave, a lone figure stood in

meditative silence, a sentinel keeping jaithful watch.

His elegant black robes shifted in the twilight breeze of Veridian III. Their intricate embroidery spelled

out the timeless principles of logic in metallic threads and Vulcan script.

Those principles shimmered in the dying light of sunset.

The sentinel's gaze remained fixed on the battered Starfleet emblem that rested on the grave. In his

expression, there was no betrayal oJ' emotion, until his meditations were at an end and proper decorum

had been observed.

Then a single tear welled up in the corner of his eye.

Ambassador Spock didn't fight it.

That battle between his two halves--Vulcan and human-- had been fought and won decades ago.

Three weeks before this day, Spock had never known of this planer's existence. Yet now he knew he

wouM never be free of it.

For history now recorded that it was on this world that James T. Kirk had reappeared, only to die again.

Spock's secondgrieving for his friend was far, far worse than the first had ever been.

What logic couM there be in that?

Far below Spock, the setting sun drew long shadows from the modest pile of rocks he watched over. In

the air above those shadows, five points of light sparkled to life.

Spock looked on as the transporter beams resolved into five Starfleet ofiScers.

One he knew--William Riker, late of the Starship Enterprise. Elsewhere on this planet, lhat vessel's

shattered wreckage was being dismantled and removed by a team of Starfleet engineers under Riker~

command. In accordance with the Prime Directire, no trace of advanced technology could remain

behind. Should the future inhabitants of Veridian III~ sister planet land here, they would discover nothing.

Not even Kirk g body.

The four others with Riker formed the honor guard that would travel with Spock back to Earth, for

Kirk~ oJficial interment. A hero ~ funeral.

For all that Kirk had meant to the Federation, that honor seemed trivial to Spoek. Yet what more could

be done to assuage the sorrow of those Kirk had touched when his spirit had fled?

Spock had passed through that last veil himself But because of Kirk, he had returned.

"You wouM do the same for me," Kirk had told him, long ago on the summit of Mount Seleya, when

Spock had been reborn.

Now the tear grew in Spock's eye because he knew he could not. Though against all logic, he desired

nothing else.

At least, he knew, Kirk had not faced whatever lay beyond his moment of death unaware of its coming.

Spock knew his friend had confronted his fate and reconciled himself to it, in that time between Kirk g

return Jkom Khitomer and the launching of the new Enterprise which had sealed his fate.

Spock took comfort from that knowledge. He found it to be most logical.

On the horizon, Veridian set and the stars shone forth from the gathering dark. The day at last was done.

The honor guard waited at attention by the grave. If all proceeded according to schedule, at this moment,

far overhead, a starship wouM be shifting orbits, preparing to lock her transporter on the remains

beneath the stones.

There couM be no Mount Seleya in Kirk's future. Logic, therefore, directed Spock to seek solace not in

what might lie ahead, but in what had gone before.

The tear slipped down his cheek. Spock watched it fall to the dust of this world. Swallowed as if it had

never existed.

Except in his memories.

So to his memories now he turned, to the.final adventure and the revelations of those last days he had

spent with his friend.

When the journey of James 7: Kirk had been ending-- --but was not yet over...

ONE

Kirk didn't look back to the past--he slammed into it running, diving, hitting the volcanic ash of Tycho IV

shoulder first, rolling to cover by Ensign Gait behind a jagged boulder.

But the boulder hadn't been good cover for Galt. The ensign was dead. Skin blue-white. Body locked in

a final contortion of pain.

Kirk faltered. He was twenty-four years old, a lieutenant three years out of the Academy. Ensign Gait

had been only nineteen. On his first mission. He had looked up to Kirk, and Kirk hadn't protected him.

The communicator at Kirk's side chirped and reflexes took over, freeing him to act. He snapped it open.

"Kirk here." "Where are those coordinates?" It was Garrovick. Kirk's captain hadn't beamed back to the

Farragut when he had had the chance, before the transporter coils had overloaded. He had stayed with

the wounded.

Waiting for the shuttlecraft. Still ten minutes away.

"Scanning now," Kirk said. He forced himself to his feet, exposing himself to whatever lay beyond the

boulder.

Whatever had attacked the Farragut. Whatever dwelt among the ashes of Tycho IV and was now

picking off the Farragut's crew, one by one.

Kirk held his bulky tricorder before him like a shield. His eyes darted from the readout to the surrounding

terrain and back again. Tycho Prime was setting. The horizon blazed with the color of blood. But there

were no readings.

"Captain, there's nothing out there!" Kirk's voice betrayed the tension he felt.

But the voice on the communicator remained calm. "Stay put and keep scanning, Lieutenant. You've got

forward fire control till the main sensors are back in operation." "Aye, sir," Kirk acknowledged. In

standard orbit above him, the Farragut's weapons were at his command. With no sensors to guide them,

Kirk was now their targeting system.

Somehow, the weight of that responsibility felt good.

A distant scream cut through the dusk, ending too abruptly.

High-pitched. A woman.

Kirk held his position, heart hammering. He fought the urge to throw down his communicator and draw

the laser pistol at his side. Garrovick had given him his orders, and there was nothing Kirk wouldn't do

for his captain.

Garrovick was that kind of commander. That kind of man.

A figure ran for Kirk's boulder. It was nothing more than a red-tinged silhouette against the sunset. Kirk

quickly checked his tricorder. The figure was human. Androvar Drake.

The young lieutenant slid into position beside Kirk, out of breath, laser drawn. His short, bristle-cut blond

hair was streaked with black volcanic ash. He glanced at Galt's body, but he showed no more reaction to

it than a Vulcan might.

"That scream," Drake said, "it was Morgan." Even as Kirk felt the shock twist through his chest, he saw

the flicker of a smile on Drake's face. Faith Morgan was the Farragut's weapons officer. For the last

three months she had shared Kirk's quarters. As his lover.

Kirk wanted to grind Drake's smirk into the rocks of this place.

But he had his orders. Garrovick's orders. Starfleet orders.

There was nothing more he could do for Faith Morgan, but the crew of the Farragut numbered four

hundred. At least it had, when the ship had first entered this system.

Kirk waved his tricorder into the gloom. Still no readings.

He felt angry tears sting his eyes, but he fought them back.

Before anything else, he was on duty.

Drake clicked through the power levels on his weapon, twisting the stubby barrel completely around to

its highest setting.

Kirk reached out to stop him. "Lasers don't work on it." One of the sentries had managed to gasp that

into her communicator before whatever it was had snuffed out her life.

"The creature can change its molecular form," Drake argued. "Maybe lasers can work on one form but

not another." Kirk rapidly changed the settings on his tricorder, scanned again, looking for a target.

"Garrovick says phasers will do it." Phasers were the newest weapons in Starfleet's arsenal.

Drake gestured dismissively with his laser. "What does Garrovick know?" Kirk slapped his

communicator to his side, grabbed Drake by his collar, shoved him hard against the boulder. "He's the

captain," Kirk hissed. "He'll know how to get us out of this." As far as Kirk was concerned, that was

what starship captains did. They were invincible. They had to be.

Drake looked amused by Kirk's emotional outburst. He smoothed his tunic where Kirk had crushed it.

"He didn't do so well in orbit, did he?" Kirk flipped open his communicator again, to keep his fist off

Drake's jaw. Drake wasn't worth it. Kirk had found that out at Starfleet Academy. Their final after-class

fight in the antigrav gym had cost Kirk two demerits. Kirk had won, barely. But the greater satisfaction

had come when Kirk had edged out Drake by two percentiles and drawn first star duty in their class.

"Something caused a temporal shift in the sensor grid," Kirk said. It was the only explanation for how

Garrovick had been taken by surprise.

Kirk had been on duty on the Farragut's bridge when it had happened. The sensor boards had lit up as

the ship had been invaded by... something--a gas cloud, a creature? At the time there had been no way

to be certain.

Garrovick had ordered shields to full strength. The creature responded by somehow vanishing from the

sensors' sensitivity range. At the same time, an impossible temporal phase shift overloaded every key

circuit in the Farragut. It might even have been a defensive move on the creature's part. But whatever had

caused it, for a breathless hour it had seemed the ship might not be able to hold her orbit.

Garrovick had ordered the evacuation of all but a skeleton flight crew. Then he had saved the ship.

Invincible.

But by then the creature had found the evacuation camp on the surface of Tycho IV. And it was a

creature, there could be no doubt about that now. A creature that fed on the red blood cells of humanoid

life-forms. Like Gait. And Faith. And all the others already cut down.

On the surface, the creature methodically probed their defenses. It overpowered their emergency force

fields.

Withstood whatever the laser cannons could send into it.

Enveloped everything with a sickly sweet smellrathe smell of death on an already dying world.

Immediately, Garrovick had beamed down to the heart of the action, organizing the withdrawal of his

crew. Fighting at their side.

Then, suddenly, halfway through the boarding process, the ship's transporters had stopped functioning.

Too strained by the temporal overload and the first evacuation.

Garrovick had called down the shuttlecraft.

No one believed they would make it in time.

But Kirk never doubted that Garrovick would save them.

Somehow.

He was the captain.

Something spiked on the tricorder's display.

Kirk fine-tuned the reading. Di-kironium. It meant nothing to him.

But then an unwelcome fragrance reached out to him. Too sweet. Overpowering.

"It's coming back..." Kirk said.

"Lieutenant!" Garrovick transmitted. "Where are those readings?" Something moved out by the distant

rocks.

No--not moved--billowed. Roiled forward against the scarlet sunset like a storm front from hell. "Kirk?!"

Garrovick repeated.

It was at this moment, in another time, another life, that Lieutenant Kirk froze. Faced with certain death,

weighed down by the responsibility of his duty, he hesitated. But not this time.

"Kirk to Farragut!" he shouted. "Target bearing thirty meters due west this location! All phaser banks

FIRE/" Instinctively Kirk charged Drake, forcing him down to cover as well. A heartbeat later, the

heavens of Tycho IV were ripped open by twin lances of blue fire.

Kirk felt the ground shake as the eerie harmonics of phased energy tore apart the atoms of everything in

its beam. He smelled burnt dust, heat, the tang of ozone released by atmospheric ionization. The barrage

ended.

Kirk peered past the edge of the boulder. A cloud of dust was lit from within by the glow of superheated

rocks. The creature was gone.

"We did it," Kirk exulted. He brought his communicator closer. "Captain Garrovickmwe..."

A wispy tendril of white vapor twisted from the dust cloud like a tornado forming in reverse. Kirk

stopped talking.

The vapor stretched up from the ground, spinning faster, rising along the ionization trail left by the phaser

beams.

Rising up to the Farragut.

"Dear God..." Kirk whispered.

He looked at Drake. Drake's eyes gleamed in the final trace of light from the sunset. His expression was

unreadable.

"Kirk to Farragut! The creature is on an intercept course!

Get out of there!" Garrovick broke in on the transmission. "Farragut! Break orbit! Maximum warp!

Now!" The Farragut% science officer responded, her voice breaking up in static.

"... shields down... coming in through... antimatter containment is..." A new star blossomed directly

overhead.

"Farragut?" Garrovick said. "Farragut, come in..." Nothing. Not even static.

Kirk stared up at the flickering pinpoint of light. Two hundred crew. A Constitution-class starship.

Reduced to one dying star among so many.

Now obscured by a slender coil of white vapor. Spiraling down from the heavens.

Coming back to claim them all.

Drake laughed beside Kirk. "Great instincts, Jimbo. See you in hell." The descending cloud creature was

almost on them. Kirk had run out of options. There was only one thing left to do.

"End program," he said.

Then the creature and Drake and Tycho IV dissolved into a holographic haze, back to the past where

they belonged. ú.. and Kirk no longer did.

"Was the suit too heavy, sir?" The young Starfleet technician waited respectfully for Kirk's answer as

Kirk slipped off the bulky encounter helmet he had worn during the simulation.

In the cavernous room in the subbasement of the Cochrane Physics Hall of Starfleet Academy, massive

banks of machinery hummed. The unpainted, generic blocks and platforms that had recreated the rocky

terrain of Tycho IV dutifully reset themselves into yellow-gridded walls.

Kirk's eyes ached where the visual input encoders had pressed against them. His back ached from the

weight of the servo drivers that controlled the feedback web enclosing his body. The entire

holoenvironment encounter rig was too heavy.

But Kirk wasn't going to be the one who complained about it.

He made a conscious effort to stand straighter, move his arms more quickly. He flashed a smile at the

technician. "Felt fine," he said lightly. "Almost as if I were back in my old uniform." The technician

grinned, impressed. As if all he ever heard were complaints. He started disconnecting the feedback web.

"You know," the technician said as if Kirk were a familiar friend of his, "someday it should be possible to

do away with the suit entirely. Use focused tractor beams. Microgravity control. Maybe even build some

props with transporter matter replication." Kirk groaned inwardly as he kept a patient smile on his face.

In addition to its weight, the suit chafed in places he didn't want to rub with an audience around.

He let the technician babble on happily about the wondrous abilities of his gizmos and gadgets and the

future of holographic simulations.

He hoped the technician would think the sweat streaming off his subject's forehead was the result of the

encounter suit's skintight fit, and not the exertion that had left Kirk close to exhaustion. Or the pain in his

shoulder not letting him forget the way he had hit the simulated ground and rolled behind the simulated

boulder.

He thought it was too bad Starfleet engineers couldn't simulate the feeling of indestructibility he had had in

his youth, when he could hit the real ground on a roll five times a day and never feel the consequences.

"Think of it," the technician continued with innocent enthusiasm. "Just walk into an empty room in your

ordinary uniform and zapf Instantly you're surrounded by a holoenvironment so realistic you can't tell the

difference between it and reality." Kirk flexed his hands, remembering the weight of the old-fashioned

tricorder he had carried during the simulation.

The way the fabric around Drake's neck had compressed in his fist. All of it an illusion.

"Trust me. It's very realistic now," Kirk said. He meant it.

"So you can be sure that's what would have happened." Kirk didn't understand. "What would have

happened?" "If you had fired at the cloud creature right away, instead of hesitating the way you really

did." Now Kirk understood. But he didn't want to talk about it.

He hadn't thought about Faith Morgan in years. But he had never forgotten her. He would never forget

any of them.

"You see, by not firing the phasers right away," the technician persisted, "the creature only attacked those

crew members on the ground. The Farragut and everyone on her were safe. But if you had fired right

away--based on the computer's reconstruction of the cloud creature's abilities, it would have returned to

the Farragut, destroyed her, then finished off everyone else on the ground as well. So you did the right

thing the first time round." And Garrovick had died because of it, Kirk thought grimly.

He changed the subject. "It should make for a wonderful training device."

The technician gave him a bewildered look. "Training? I guess. But how about for entertainment? The

gaming possibilities alone are endless." Kirk kicked off the heavy feedback boots that had made him feel

as if he had crunched across volcanic soil. "You programmed all this for 'entertainment' purposes?" he

asked.

The technician retained his puzzled expression as he retrieved Kirk's feedback boots, balancing the entire

suit in an awkward position across his arms. "Sir, we've programmed almost all your early exploits into

the system." "My exploits?" The technician nodded ardently. "This encounter with the cloud creature of

Tycho IV, and your destruction of it eleven years later on stardate 3619.2. And stardate 3045.6--

remember? Your encounter with the Metrons and hand-to-hand battle with the Gorn. And

3468.1--when you escaped from the alien on Pollux IV who claimed to be the Greek god Adonais.

We've almost got them all, sir. More coming online each day." Kirk felt rattled. He couldn't recall a single

stardate from his first five-year mission on the Enterprise if his pension depended on it. "But why?" The

technician stared blankly at Kirk, as if he couldn't understand why the question had been asked. "Sir...

you're a hero." "Oh." That again, Kirk thought.

"Don't you feel that way, sir?" Kirk hesitated. He didn't want to say the wrong thing. This young man had

gone to a prodigious amount of effort to re-create an incident from Kirk's past in Starfleet's prototype

holographic encounter suite. In incredible detail, as well.

Even Kirk had forgotten the laser sidearms that used to be standard Starfleet issue.

He had, he admitted to himself, forgotten a great deal from those days.

He smiled at the technician, trying to soften the blow.

"Those... 'exploits,'" he began. "Yes, sir?" "They were just my job," Kirk said simply. "A job I did a long

time ago." The technician regarded Kirk blankly for a moment, as if unsure how to respond.

"It was more than a job, sir. To us." With a nod he indicated his fellow technicians in the control room

overlooking the encounter suite. Men and women, they were all the technician's age. Younger than Kirk

could ever imagine having been. And all of them were lined up against the viewport, watching Kirk's

every move. It was disconcerting to be under that close scrutiny.

Kirk could see the dawn of disillusionment in the young technician's eyes. "We'll never forget, sir." With

that, the young man turned and walked back to the control room.

Kirk held out his hand to stop him. He wanted to say something, anything, to erase the youth's

disappointment.

But he didn't know how.

It wasn't the first time, either.

The problem was with expectations, Kirk knew. For all that it mattered to others, his past held little

appeal for him. He had always looked toward the future, toward new challenges, not past

accomplishments.

But his future was running out.

He was a starship captain without a starship. Unable to look back, unable to go forward. Trapped in the

present. Pent up. Frustrated. Ready to go nova.

It was an intolerable state for James T. Kirk. And he knew he had to do something about it soon.

Otherwise, he would have to give up. And giving up had never been an option for him.

He'd rather die first, and Kirk was not yet ready to face that final moment.

Though in time, he knew, even a starship captain must die.

TWO

No one knew who had built the Dark Range Platform.

The seemingly haphazard supports of the immense space station stretched out like demented spiders'

webs. Coiled around a confusion of life-support spheres and cylinders installed by a dozen races over the

platform's millennia of service.

Once, it might have been a transfer point for vast flotillas of starships. Some, perhaps, belonging to the

Preservers themselves. It was that old.

But now it was a backwater refueling stop. A starting point for dreamers seeking fortune among the stars.

A lair for the smugglers and cutthroats who would steal that fortune from them.

Alone, it drifted in the dark between the stars. At relative rest in the hinterlands of the Federation's

frontier and the Klingon Empire's Old Regions. As telling testimony to the station's true worth, neither the

Federation nor the Empire claimed it.

No one knew who had built Dark Range. What's more, no one cared.

But for Pavel Chekov on stardate 9854.1, it was the most important thing in his life. Because the

grime-covered walls of its access corridors might well be the last thing he would ever see.

The cold tip of the disruptor's emitter node dug deeper into Chekov's temple.

The leather-gloved hand tightened against his windpipe. It was impossible to breathe. That was the point.

Kort, the one-eyed Klingon, breath reeking of bad gagh, leaned in closer, finger tightening on the trigger

stud, counting down.

"... hut... chorgh... soch..." In seven seconds, Chekov would be a cloud of disrupted subatomic particles.

His only thought: What wouM the captain do?

"... jay... vagh..." Chekov struggled uselessly against the Klingon's thickly muscled arm. "I vanted to get

on with my life!" he gasped.

Kort stopped counting. Narrowed his one good eye at his captive. Infinitesimally lessened the tightness of

his grip.

"That is why you punched an admiral?" Kort asked. His disbelief was evident. "Destroyed your career?"

The deep ridges in the Klingon's heavy brow furrowed all the way down to the duranium plate that

covered his useless eye socket.

"Vat career? Starfleet had nothing more to offer me." Chekov looked sideways along the barrel of the

disruptor.

Kort's breath made him want to gag. But he had the Klingon's attention as surely as the Klingon had his.

"Thirty-three years I had given them," Chekov continued.

"And for vat? I vas still a commander--a commander.t Always having to do vat the brass told me to do."

The words came easily to Chekov now. He wasn't even aware of the disruptor's tip easing away from his

temple. "'Readings, Mr.

Chekov.' 'Run a sensor sveep, Mr. Chekov.' Alvays in some- one else's shadow. Never a chance for

me. To show vhat I could do." Along the length of the disruptor's barrel, Chekov met Kort's icy

one-eyed gaze. Held it. The weapon's ready light pulsed silently, fully charged.

"I vanted to let go of it. I didn't vant to be angry anymore." At last, Kort pulled the weapon back. But still

held its aim on Chekov's head. Still kept his hand on Chekov's throat.

Water dripped somewhere. The slippery decks rumbled with the comings and goings of cargo shuttles

from the nearby bays. Chekov counted heartbeats. Waiting.

Kort shot a glance across the shadowed corridor. To where the two Andorians held Uhura.

One delicate blue hand was clamped over Uhura's mouth.

A ceremonial dagger precisely indented the skin under her jaw. The blade's silver sheen was marred by a

pinprick of red blood. Human blood.

Kort nodded once.

Uhura tensed.

With great reluctance, the bulky Andorian in the fur vest took the dagger away. The slender Andorian in

chain mail removed his hand from Uhura's face.

It was Uhura's turn to gasp for breath.

But still she couldn't move. The Andorians kept her pinned to the bulkhead.

"Is it true?" Kort asked Uhura.

Uhura's eyes darted to Chekov. Chekov saw the same thought hidden there. Knew what she was

thinking.

"Don't look at him.t" Kort shouted. His deep voice echoed along the twisting corridor of pipes and

conduits. Was swallowed by the distant thrum of jury-rigged air purifiers and gravity generators.

Kort jabbed his disruptor back into Chekov's temple.

"Is... it... true?" he repeated.

"Yes," Uhura said evenly. "For both of us."

Chekov counted ten heartbeats. An eternity.

Then Kort reholstered his weapon. Motioned to the Andorians to release Uhura.

Their antennae dipped in disappointment, but they did as they were told.

Kort grabbed Chekov by the shoulders. "So, even fabled Starfleet is no different than the Empire's navy.

STAR TREK - TOS - Ashes Of Eden

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