“You’re a bad guy,” Joseph told her.
Kirk did not admonish him for breaking silence. His son was right.
But Norinda didn’t respond to any of those pronouncements. “I offer you love and peace and—”
“Understanding, I know,” Kirk said. “We’ve all heard it. And we’ll all keep rejecting it because you’re not offering love at all. All you want is for us to accept you. But you’re not willing to accept us. You don’t want to be loved—you want to be worshipped.”
Norinda seemed to grow taller, her shoulders broader. “When the Hour of Opposition comes and the bombs go off and the war begins, you will see your worlds and your people consumed by hate and war and confusion. And when you have seen worlds die because you would not accept the true reality of existence, then you will understand. And then, you will accept the Peace of the Totality.”
Kirk stepped back from Norinda as her features continued to change, becoming Reman.
“When we met,” Kirk said, “you told me you were running from the Totality. But you’re part of it, aren’t you?”
“So are you, Kirk. You just don’t know it yet!”
Norinda loomed over Kirk now. Ears and face and fangs carved from gray stone, eyes disappearing behind the impenetrably dark visor that grew and formed across them, she pointed a jagged claw at Joseph. “Zol,” she growled, “take the boy!”
Those three words freed Kirk.
Without thought he slapped his hand to his back beneath his jacket and in one swift arc had drawn his mek’leth and slashed at Zol.
The Romulan stumbled to the grass with a cry of pain, green blood spurting from the deep cut on his forearm.
Kirk kept in front of Joseph as Norinda backed away.
“Spock—there’s a communicator in Joseph’s pouch. Hail the Calypso.”
Norinda shouted to the three Romulans cowering by the transporter console. “Raise transport shields! Activate subspace jammers!”
Kirk didn’t care that he was too late to stop those orders. He just wanted to stop Norinda.
So he ran at her, mek’leth held high, and even as she shrank before him, he spun the weapon in a gleaming arc to deliver a k’rel tagh stroke that angled down through her shoulder and into her chest and—
—Norinda’s torso exploded into a spray of black powder and all resistance to the mek’leth vanished, throwing Kirk completely off balance and sending him tumbling to the ground.
Kirk twisted to avoid landing on his own blade, then looked back at Norinda to see her torso re-form out of a swirling black cloud, as if he were watching a fire in reverse, with the smoke billowing back to its point of origin.
Then she was whole again, but in a patchwork confusion of different aspects. Her face rippled from Klingon to Andorian to Romulan, while her chest heaved out, becoming Tellarite, then collapsed inward, human.
But like ripples in still water, the confusion slowed and she settled into a single form—Romulan. But she fell to her knees without awareness, unconscious.
“Spock! The transporter!”
Kirk sprinted for the transporter console, hoping that Virron and Sen and Nran were all so terrified by what they had witnessed that they had neglected to follow Norinda’s orders. To keep them terrified, he slashed his mek’leth back and forth while shouting a Klingon battle cry.
They scattered like panicked antelope bounding away from a lion.
Kirk swiftly checked the transporter controls as Spock and Joseph hurried to join him. “Everything seems functional. Did you raise the Calypso?”
“No response,” Spock said.
Kirk turned the transporter controls over to Spock, took the communicator. It was functioning properly. “Kirk to Calypso!”
Still nothing.
“Captain, the transporter is operational. But I will need coordinates for our destination.”
“Understood, Spock.”
Why wasn’t the communicator working? It didn’t make sense. Unless there was something wrong on the Calypso.
Kirk tried again, and as if his Enterprise herself had suddenly entered orbit, he had his answer. The right one.
“Scott here, Captain.”
28
S.S. CALYPSO, STARDATE 57488.3
Picard entered the bridge on the run, brought by Scott’s urgent summons.
“It’s Captain Kirk,” the engineer said as he stepped back from the communications console. “He needs to talk to you right away. And he’s with Mister Spock!”
Picard didn’t even stop to consider the startling news. He sat down in Scott’s place and hit the transmit control.
“Picard here, Jim. And did I hear correctly. Is Ambassador Spock with you?”
“He’s here, Jean-Luc, and it’s quite a story. But what we’ve found out is that there is no Tal Shiar involvement in the attacks that are planned to start the civil war. It’s the Jolan Movement! They’re the ones responsible.”
“Norinda’s people.” Picard suddenly realized that Norinda had not been talking about war in the abstract. “Did you find out anything else about the attacks? We need to know how they plan to destroy the workers’ communes.”
“All she said was that the bombs will go off at the Hour of Opposition.”
“You’re sure of that? She said bombs will go off?”
“Her words exactly.”
Picard decided he might as well wish for the impossible. “I don’t suppose she told you where the bombs are hidden?”
“No,” Kirk replied. “But there seems to be a pattern to the type of environment she likes, and it’s not one that many Remans would ever enter. Check for greenhouse domes, anyplace hot and too bright for Remans.”
Picard agreed with Kirk’s logic. “That’s a good place to start. Now what is your situation with those people? Any idea when they’ll permit you to come back?”
“Right now, everything seems under control. All we need are some transport coordinates and a friendly starship.”
Picard heard the ease in his friend’s voice and was curious to know what had happened. When Kirk and his son had beamed off the Calypso, Picard had even wondered if he might never see Kirk again. Evidently, things had taken a turn for the better, especially with the miraculous return of Spock.
“I’d be happy to oblige,” Picard transmitted. “Let me check our position.” Picard looked over to find La Forge at navigation. “Geordi—how long until Kirk will be within range of the Calypso’s transporter?”
La Forge checked the numbers. “On this orbit, thirty-two minutes.” He exhaled noisily. “I sure miss the Enterprise.”
Picard agreed wholeheartedly. The transporters on that starship had enough range and power to beam people from the opposite side of an Earth-sized planet. For most transporter operations, he rarely, if ever, had to take into account the ship’s orbit.
Picard hit the transmit control. “We’ll be by in half an hour, Jim. Can you hold out till then?”
Picard got his answer when he released the control.
Joseph was screaming in fear.
Kirk whirled around and dropped the communicator the instant his child cried out.
It was impossible, but Norinda had him, one arm clutching his chest, the other squeezing his neck in the V of her elbow.
How had she moved so quickly? While he was using the communicator to talk with Picard, he’d kept watch on her unmoving, kneeling form at least fifty meters away.
Kirk shot a glance back to where she’d been only seconds ago and—
—she was still there! Unraveling strand by strand as a long black cord snaked from her kneeling figure to the Norinda who held his struggling child.
The kneeling Norinda was nothing more than a paper-thin shell, used to create a duplicate Norinda. Somehow the shell’s interior volume had become a tendril that could reach out unseen, behind his child.