“Warp-core imbalance,” Kirk said. He held his finger over the emergency separation control, watching the Romulan numbers flash by on the warp systems status display.
“We’re going to warp this close to a planet?” McCoy asked.
“We’re not,” Kirk said reassuringly. “But that big ore hauler is.”
He pressed the separation control and the shuttle lurched gently as the explosive bolts holding the warp pod to the hull blew free. The pod tumbled toward a fully loaded ore hauler just rising from the crater floor.
Kirk pulled the shuttle into a ninety-degree climb, then touched the controls that brought imagery from the rear visual sensors online.
At first, the warp core was too small to be seen.
Then it exploded.
And then it ignited the fuel and engines of the ore hauler.
The crater terminal resembled a volcano, blazing with fire.
“My God, Jim…how many people did that kill?”
“With luck,” Kirk said, “none. The atmosphere’s too thin for there to be much of a shock wave, and our first couple of passes should have driven most workers to shelter.”
He found the controls for the hatch, closed it, began the pressurization cycle. Next he tried to find the gravity adjustment settings, but suddenly the shuttle shook with thunderous vibration as the viewport flared with blue fire.
Kirk checked the tactical display. As he had expected, a Reman warbird was closing, and VIP shuttle or not, he knew the small craft’s shields couldn’t withstand an all-out attack.
But since the small VIP transport was as fully equipped as he’d hoped, Kirk knew it wouldn’t have to withstand an attack.
He veered to the right, activated the shuttle’s cloaking device, then instantly cut speed and veered to the left.
A few seconds later, the massive, double-hulled warbird streaked past, launching a spread of torpedoes in the wrong direction, indicating that its crew had lost their prey.
Kirk set the shuttle to climb to a standard orbit, then finished adjusting the gravity, setting it to eighty percent of Earth normal.
For the first time in days, he felt he could truly breathe again, and just before he took off his helmet, he heard McCoy sigh with the same welcome relief.
The cabin air was still cold, but life-support was working, and when Kirk took off his gloves, he could feel heat blowing from the circulators.
“You’re a hell of a pilot,” McCoy said so wearily that Kirk went back to help him with the rest of his suit. “How’re you holding up?” McCoy asked.
Kirk shrugged out of his own Romulan suit, let it fall to the deck. “Nothing finding my son couldn’t cure.”
McCoy stared at him. “You have a plan, don’t you?”
“Most of one,” Kirk admitted. “But you rest now. I’ll let you know when we get there.”
“Get where?”
There was a fully armed, overpowered, heavily shielded Starfleet vessel in orbit of this planet, and as far as Kirk was concerned, it was time he made use of it.
“The Calypso,” he said.
19
JOLAN SEGMENT, STARDATE 57487.1
Norinda had given the Romulans her ship, yet neither she nor they achieved what they wanted. Norinda had had to confess that she could not explain the functions of the vessel she had stolen from the Totality, and the ship’s alien technology baffled the Romulan engineers.
“But I did teach them something,” Norinda told Picard as they walked among the flowers. “The supremacy of the most important power in the universe: love.”
“And that was the start of the Jolan Movement?” Picard asked.
“There were other peace movements on Romulus at the time. I brought them together, the best of each.”
I’ll bet you did, Picard thought. By visually recreating herself moment by moment, Norinda could become a perfect mirror for the desires of her audience. Yet there was no truth in her appearance, whatever shape she took.
Even now, discussing a philosophy of love with a shapeshifting being who only looked like a Reman threatened Picard’s own concept of reality. Only the bloody cloth he kept pressed to his torn ear kept him focused on what he really needed to get from Norinda. It had taken La Forge to realize there was one force stronger than love—pain.
For years, the engineer had been plagued by constant headaches brought on by his first artificial sight system: the Visual Instrument and Sensory Organ Replacement. When his VISOR had been replaced by ocular implants, La Forge’s headaches had all but disappeared. But through the inevitable experimentation with his new vision system’s settings, the engineer discovered certain optical frequencies able to reproduce those early headaches with stomach-churning precision. That was how he had managed to block whatever signal Norinda was transmitting into his nervous system, by burying it beneath an even stronger one.
Picard’s means had been far less elegant, and bloodier, but the end result was the same as for his engineer. Norinda had ceased her attempts to control the two of them as she did everyone else, and had opted for a more novel approach: open discussion.
“And so, when you grew too powerful,” Picard said, “you were banished to Remus with your followers?” He looked across the chamber to see La Forge keeping a watchful eye on him. The three Romulans who had been so distraught at the way the two humans had treated their spiritual leader had left immediately after Norinda’s transformation into a Reman.
“I am not powerful,” Norinda said lightly, though as a Reman, the words came out with a deep rumbling under-tone, like a felinoid purring. “It is my message which the war-makers fear, because it is true, and in their hearts they know it.”
Picard stopped walking, looked up at Norinda with no fear of losing his ability to concentrate. From what she had just said, he finally had his opening, knew the argument that would convince her.
“Norinda, we must work together, because your goals, the goals of the Jolan Movement, they’re my goals, too.”
From her lofty Reman height, Norinda gazed down at him, her Reman eyes a mystery to him, still protected by her visor from the bright light of this greenhouse chamber. “You believe in the supremacy of love?” she asked.
“I believe in stopping war.”
“But through the supremacy of love?”
Picard had to get her off her one-track approach, open her eyes to other strategies. “Through whatever means possible,” he said.
Norinda smiled at him, Reman fangs glistening. “That is what I intend to do.”
“I’m sorry,” Picard said, puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“The reason you’re here, Picard. It’s because of the civil war.”
The pain in Picard’s ear suddenly vanished in his surprise. “You know about it?”
“I have been trying to stop it.”
Picard was stunned. There was no need to convince Norinda that a war was coming. She was ahead of him.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“The followers of Jolan are everywhere in the empire. We know the Tal Shiar’s plans firsthand.”
Picard’s pulse quickened with new hope. If the Jolan Movement had agents in contact with the Tal Shiar, and if Norinda would allow him to use those agents, then it could still be possible to make contact with the Tal Shiar and relay the Federation’s offer of support in return for peace.
“Norinda, I can’t tell you what this means to me, what this means for the possibility of peace.” A dozen questions came to Picard then, but the most important had to do with time. “You say you know the Tal Shiar’s plans. Do you know if they are following a timetable? Is there a specific date? A specific action that they’ve chosen to signal the beginning of the war?”
“The Hour of Opposition,” Norinda said.