“It’s not a disagreement,” McCoy snapped. “Jim’s wrong, I’m right. That’s a different matter.”
Kirk knew better than to take the bait, and remained silent.
“Then how would you like to resolve it?” Riker suddenly asked.
“Resolve what?” Kirk answered.
“The truth,” Troi said.
“About what happened to Spock,” Riker added.
McCoy glared at Kirk. “And how do y’all suggest we do that?”
“By going to Romulus,” Riker said, “and investigating Spock’s death firsthand.”
McCoy straightened up in his chair, surprised. Kirk leaned back, thoughtful. So there had been an unspoken condition underlying everything Riker and Troi had said. Riker had intended to make this offer from the beginning.
And, Kirk sensed, there was something else being hidden, as well.
“What about the Romulan authorities?” he asked. “Aren’t they investigating?”
“The Compliance Division is,” Troi said. “They’re the equivalent of the local civilian police. They’re treating Spock’s death as a criminal matter.”
“But from everything you’ve said, Counselor, Spock’s…murder…wasn’t a criminal act. It was political.”
Troi gave Riker an intense look. “Given the current situation on Romulus, the civilian authorities don’t have the power—or the will—to act against the political authorities.”
McCoy slapped his hand on the table. “You just told us there was no political authority on Romulus.”
“Other than the Fleet,” Kirk added.
“No one,” Riker said, “is saying this is going to be easy. It is quite possible that Spock was killed by a disaffected faction of anarchists who have never acted before, and who will never act again. People impossible to trace and impossible to bring to justice.”
“It’s equally possible,” Kirk pointed out, “Spock was assassinated on the orders of the Fleet leadership—people paying lip service to talk of unification, who have no intention of allowing it to proceed.”
Riker nodded. “And if that’s true,” he said, “then Spock’s assassination could be the proverbial tip of the iceberg, proof of a powerful group submerged within the chaos of Romulan authority. A group determined to defeat any efforts toward a new era of peace between the empire and the Federation.”
Almost without conscious thought, Kirk felt an odd relief, almost a dislocation of his emotions, realizing he was no longer focused on his loss in the past, but on the mission that lay in the future.
“Will,” he said, “do you have any reason for thinking such a cabal exists?”
Riker tapped the controls of a small padd on the table before him. The viewscreen on the far wall changed its display to show what was obviously a Romulan warship, but one that literally bristled with armaments. A scale at the side of the image gave an indication of the warship’s size—at minimum twice the length of Picard’s Enterprise.
“What is that monstrosity?” McCoy asked.
“The Scimitar,” Worf said.
“Shinzon’s ship,” Riker elaborated. “With a fully functional thalaron weapon capable of obliterating the biomass of an entire planet with a single discharge.”
Kirk understood. “Yet it was a slave’s ship.”
“Exactly,” Riker said.
With that, Kirk knew what the Federation feared, and why Riker had come to him.
A ship like the Scimitar did not arise from empty space. It was undeniably the result of a massive Romulan program of research and development. Even Starfleet’s mind-boggling Martian shipyards would be hard-pressed to construct such a vessel in under two years. And add to that a thalaron weapon capable of planetary destruction…Kirk’s mind raced through the implications. How many intermediate models had been built and tested? All of this designed, prototyped, tested, refined, and brought online without Starfleet detecting any hint of it.
And then, in the end, the Scimitar had been placed in the hands of a slave who single-handedly eliminated the existing government of Romulus.
“You think there are more of those,” Kirk said.
“No question,” Troi said.
“The Romulans admit as much, to a point,” Riker added. “They’re saying this class of vessel was intended for use in the Dominion War, but that the war ended before the space-frames were complete. Same story for the thalaron weapons—developed to be used against the Dominion homeworlds in the Gamma Quadrant, but never brought forward to operational status.”
“Can they account for the unfinished ships and weapons?” Kirk asked.
Riker shook his head. “Supposedly destroyed by Shinzon once he took control of the Scimitar, so that no one could oppose him.”
McCoy gestured to the screen, unconvinced. “How does a slave gain control of that?”
Worf’s gruff voice caught everyone’s attention. “There is only one way,” he said bluntly. “Someone who was not a slave gave it to him.”
Kirk suddenly felt indescribably tired. A voice within him cried out, I left this behind! My duty is to my son! This belongs in the care of a new generation!
Except…Spock was dead.
So how could he say that this was not his fight?
“A puppetmaster,” Kirk said, wondering if the exhaustion he felt was apparent.
“That’s one theory,” Riker agreed. “Someone, or some group within the Romulan power structure, perhaps even a reconstituted Tal Shiar, was responsible for elevating Shinzon to a position of relative power. Responsible for—”
“Killing Spock,” Kirk said.
“Starfleet can’t investigate on Romulus,” Troi continued, and to Kirk it seemed her words were well rehearsed. “Federation diplomats are limited in how far they can push for results.”
“But a civilian,” Riker continued, then looked over at McCoy, “two civilians, with close ties to the victim, if you investigate, then that’s something the Romulan authorities will understand, and the Federation’s friends among them can help.”
McCoy’s laugh was forced and angry. “So now we have our strings pulled by the Federation puppetmaster to go looking for the Romulan puppetmaster.”
“The alternative is to do nothing,” Riker said, “and hope that what we fear most is wrong.”
“Which is,” Kirk said, “unacceptable.”
Worf nodded.
Riker appeared to think the meeting had run its course. “Will you do it, Jim? Will you go to Romulus, investigate Spock’s murder to see if it might be connected to an even greater threat to the Federation than Shinzon posed?”
Everyone at the table, including Kirk, knew it was impossible for him to refuse. “Yes,” he agreed.
“That’s it?” McCoy suddenly said. “You’re not even going to ask any questions?”
Kirk didn’t understand the reason for the doctor’s outburst, and neither, it seemed, did anyone else.
“Bones, there’ll be time for questions later.”
“What about the most important one?” McCoy asked. He looked triumphantly around the table. “Given all the machinations and string-pulling going on around here, can anyone prove that Spock really is dead?”
Riker had no answer for that, and for a moment, Kirk felt a completely irrational moment of hope.
It didn’t last.
There were three thousand witnesses to the truth, and multiple unaltered recordings.
Spock was dead.
All that mattered now was the mission.
3
SOLTOTH CAVERNS, ROMULUS, STARDATE 57473.1
He was tired, he was sore, he fought to keep despair from overwhelming him, but he was not dead.
Even now, one standard week after his outrageous gambit, Spock still tasted the primitive explosive’s sulfuric sting in the back of his throat. His ears still rang with the echo of the blast. His muscles ached from the force of the concussion that had slammed first against his body armor, and then against him.