Star Trek: The Original Series - 082 - Federation (2 page)

The scientist had bitterly concluded that the researchers at Ellison Outpost had spent eight years conversing with a stone, and had gotten exactly the same results as they might get from asking questions of any rock. A few months later, the Guardian had ceased to respond to questions at all, as if confirming the scientist’s assessment.

The Vulcan kept her face blank, but her next words, to Kirk’s attuned ears, were a plea by any other name. “I would find it most interesting if you would ask it a question, sir.” Kirk nodded. It was a small enough request. In a few minutes, a few hours at most, he would be gone, but the Vulcan would still vork here. Why leave her with regrets?

He turned to the Guardian, focusing on its wide opening through which the other side of the plaza was clear and unob-structed. The ruins beyond stretched to the horizon.

“Guardian,” Kirk said in a firm, commanding tone, “do you remember me?”

The Vulcan betrayed her extreme youth by holding her breath in audible anticipation. An instant later, she remembered the tricorder at her side and brought it up to check its readings of the mute stone.

“Guardian,” Kirk repeated, “show me the history of my world.” The space bound by the circle of stone was unchanged.

Kirk turned to the Vulcan. “I’m sorry,” he said. And in an abstract way, he was, even though the mysteries of the Guardian had moved beyond his concern.

“Thank you for trying, sir,” the Vulcan said. Then she switched off her tricorder and stood with her hands behind her back, as if she were stone herself and had no intention of leaving his side.

In the past, Kirk might have paused to consider a polite way to ask what he asked next, but time had become more important than hurt feelings these days.

“Lieutenant Commander,” he said, “I would appreciate it if you would leave me alone here.” The startled Vulcan hid her surprise again, though not as well as the first time.

“Is anything wrong, sir?” “I wish to meditate.” It was a lie, of course, but one with which no Vulcan would argue.

“Of course, sir,” the Vulcan said. She began to walk away. Kirk turned back to the stone. Then he heard her footsteps stop. He looked back at her. A wind had sprung up. Her severely cut hair fluttered against her pointed ears.

“Sir,” she called out over the growing wind, “this outpost has standing orders that personnel are never to step through the opening in the Guardian. We do not know if or when it might become operational again.” “Understood,” Kirk called back, and the Vulcan left him. He was alone with the Guardian. He stared through the opening. Is this what I’ve come back for? Kirk thought. With no more future before me, did I hope in some way to return to the past?

The wind gusted and Kirk felt himself pushed toward the stone, caught in a swirl of obscuring dust that made his eyes water and his throat raw. He reached out a hand to steady himself. The Guardian was cold to his touch. He felt tired.

He thought of the stateroom Sulu would have for him on the t.lw’c/s’ior. A soft bed. He could even turn down the gravity to ease the ache in his back. The old knife wound he had gotten just before the Coridan Babel Conference so many years ago had been coming back to taunt him of late. Assisted by too many other past injuries. too many sudden transports into different gravity fields.

“Has it come to this?” Kirk asked the wind and the dust. “Will there be no more worlds to explore? No more battles to fight?” The Guardian was silent.

Just as Kirk had known it would be.

There would be no more miracles for him in this universe. He had captured a part of it in his life, imprinted a thousand worlds in his mind, had experiences and adventures that humans of centuries past could not conceive, and which humans of centuries to come could never repeat.

He should be content with that, he knew.

But he wasn’t.

For all his confidence, his bravado, his skills and talent and drive to be the best, in his heart, at his core, there were doubts.

Too many words left unsaid. Too many actions left undone. Too many questions gone unanswered.

And now, with the journey’s end in sight, with the knowledge that it was time to put aside those things left unfinished, Kirk was not ready.

His doubts tortured him.

Edith, his love, in a roadway of old Earth, the truck rushing for her.

David, his son, on the Genesis planet, with a Klingon knife above his heart.

Garrovick, his commander, and 200 crew facing death on TychoIV.

For all that Kirk had done, had he done enough?

Could anyone have done enough?

Or was it all without meaning? Was life a simple tragedy of distraction from birth to death, with no more purpose than this stone before him?

Kirk knew his journey would be ending soon, and this far into it, he still did not understand what had driven him to take it, nor long to continue it.

Alone, he whispered a single word to the wind and the dust.

“Why?” And for the first time in two decades, the Guardian of Forever answered….

]’he Eugenics Wars of the late twentieth century were more than lifiY years in the past, but the evil that had spawned them lived on.

Ha,’ed, intolerance, unrestrained greed, all those qualities which defined humaniO, so well, proved fertile ground as always.

,q ,k, eneration unborn at the turn of the millennium grew up with a
lscination for those who had promised order and salvation in the mi&t of chaos. In the worm of the mid-twenty-first century’, crumbling beneath the environmental outrages of the twentieth, that promise was a heady dream. A perfect worm was possible if ,n
‘ the mistakes made by Khan Noonien Singh and his followers could be avoided.

Adrik Thorsen was one of that generation determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

He heard the call of the supermen whispered through the ages, predating even Khan. He rallied beneath the red banners and dark ea~,/e
/’ the Optimum Movement. He wore the red urnform of Cob;he/Green. He awoke each day with the knowledge that the desUny of the world, of all humanity, lay in the hands of those who h
d the will to take drastic, necessary action.

.4drik Thorsen had that will, and in the mid-twenO,-first century, in pockets of despair, regions overcome by anarchy and hopeless-hess, Thorsen was allowed to enact his policies.

His quest.for perfection began with the weeding out of the unfit.

Those who were less than optimal, by infirmit),, by geneties, then by religious belie~ and political persuasion, were the first to be coded ,for deletion. In those earl), days, killing children for the sins off their parents had been distressing to Thorsen. But in time he came to see the anguish he experienced, and then transcended, as a sign of his own growing perfection.

True to his own theories, Adrik Thorsen was becoming optimal.

If the world would only follow in his footsteps, he could lead all humanity to an era of peace and prosperity that would surpass all understanding.

But his progress tormented him because he knew that whenever great men such as he dared dream great dreams, inevitably there were those who would attempt to drag them down. By their very opposition, he considered his opponents to have proven themselves less than optimal. Thus, they, too, could be coded for deletion with all the others unfit to share the world.

As he journeyed on his own inner search for the Optimum, Adrik Thorsen’s dream consumed him. Then it consumed his own pocket of the world. In time he was certain it would consume the world itself and Paradise would follow from that moment as surely as night followed day, as constant as a law of nature.

But ,first Thorsen understood he must vanquish the laws of histor)’. The biggest mistake that had been made by Khan’s supermen was that they had lost. Adrik Thorsen would not permit that mistake to be made a second time.

Thus on the morning of ;l/larch 19, 2061, Thorsen himself led the mission against the WED Research Plat/brm, geostationary orbit, Earth. Six carbon-shelled, single-passenger orbital transfer units carried Thorsen andfive trusted troopers to within two kilometers off the corporate space station, undetected by proximiO’ radar. The transfer units were jettisoned and the final approach was made in membrane suits, using nonignition maneuvering units.

The); made magnetic contact with the station’s hull at 01:20 G.xll’, precisely as scheduled. Their induction scans showed that no alarms had been triggered.

:tl 0l;27 GMT, they detonated the first spinner charge on the zq~link dish, shutting off all communications with the platform’s
,otporate headquarters. Eight seconds later, a series of secondary dctotTations flashed along the staff module, splitting it in two.

T17orsen watched with satisjaction as he counted seven platform crew members expelled from the resulting hull breach, arms and
c
s kicking frantically, mouths horrifically gaping with silent cries i, the vacuum. As he had suspected, two of the crew members wore tl~’ bhtc and white unzforms of the New United Nations peacemak-it~,~/brees. It was clear that Thorsen and the Optimum Movement were t7ot the only ones who knew what breakthrough had been
%
,~itleered at this facility.

,tccording to the operations manifest Thorsen had obtained, ten researchers and an unknown number of peacemakers remained on the platform. By now, the platform
automated emergeno’ decom- [,’ession procedures would have sealed internal airlocks. It would bc at least.five minutes before any remaining peacemakers could ctr;
l their own membrane suits and launch a counterattack.

Tllor,sen and his troopers were unopposed as they jetted directly to t/ze oz~termost arm of the platform, where the revolutionary new test vehicle was stored in its own docking module.

Thorsen knew he could not explosively decompress that module without risk of damaging the vehicle itself. And it would be suicide
i,’ a~iv of his troopers to attempt entry through the personnel (lir
ock, where they would become a captive target. Accordingly, T/zor,s’en ordered one of his troopers to the airlock to deploy an i~!flatable decoy. The decoy’ was the size and shape of a trooper in a ,Tc,Tbrane suit, and would draw the attention and laser fire of any o’cw members inside. At the same time, Thorsen commanded two other froopers to assemble an emergency evacuation blister on the (~,,’side e f the docking module, sealing it to the hull and pressuriz-i~,, it. 5k)w his forces could breach the module’s hull without loss of i~f~’r~zal atmosphere. The vehicle inside would be safe.

,-tt Thorsen 5’ signal, the first trooper cycled the inflatable deco), t/,’oz~,h the personnel airlock as the troopers in the evac blister used c’z~tiqk’ lasers to breach the hull.

The two troopers floating near Thorsen, ten meters away from the module, watched for the approach of peacemakers from the other airlocks.

But whoever remained inside the vehicle storage module did not share Thorsen’s respect for rational military action. Before Thorsen’s troopers in the evac blister could finish cutting their entry point, a gout of crystallizing moisture exploded from the vehicle airlock doors at the end of the module. Debris blew out with it, meaning both the interior and exterior doors had been opened at once.

Thorsen guessed what desperate strategy was being attempted and instantly moved to counteract it. He and the two troopers with him.jetted to the open vehicle airlock door. The.first trooper to arrive was cut in half by a particle beam, his suit and flesh rupturing in an explosion of instantly frozen blood.

Thorsen directed a fiy-by-wire fiare pack to the lip of the vehicle airlock door and ignited it. Anyone inside who had seen the flash would be blind for at least thirty seconds. Then he and the remaining troopers flew into the docking module, lasers on continuous,fire, tuned for membrane fabric, not for metal or carbon.

There were no peacemakers inside, only’ unarmed researchers, all but one cowering in their pressure suits. Soon, only that one remained alive. She was in the vehicle itself, a reconfigured Orbital Fighter Escort with a single particle cannon on its nose. The modifications that Thorsen knew had been made to the fighter’s vectored impulse drive unit appeared to be all interior. From the outside, it was no different from any other fighter he had piloted.

Thorsen
troopers on watch outside the airlock door reported that no peacemakers had yet emerged from the other modules.

Thorsen conferred quickly with the troopers in the module with him. They c’ould see the researcher in the.fighter through the vehicle’s jTight-deck windows. It was dijcult to assess what she was doing on the control consoles, but it was apparent that the fighter was still locked into position on its launch rails and would not be able to leave without a manual release.

Then Thorsen’s induction scans alerted him to impulse circuits cycling through their ignition sequence. The researcher was attempting to power up the fighter’s main drive. Thorsen knew that when the researcher activated it, the plasma venting would kill overtone in the docking module, including her, and the mechanical strain against the launch rails would tear what was left of the entire ?/af/brm apart.

Thorsen admired her for her willingness to die for her ideals.

He nodded at her with respect as he tuned his laser to optical j).cqtwncies that would pass through the fighter’s flight-deck windows. Though he forgave her the terror she showed as she saw the muzzle of the weapon point at her,’ she died badly’, without
lcceptance of her fate at the hands of her superior. She was obviottsly not optimal. Thorsen thus had no regret as he watched tter lff
,less body slowly spin in the fighter~ cabin.

ItJthin ten minutes, the troopers had removed the researcher~’ body and Thorsen was strapped into the pilot’s chair. Despite the ,todlifications to the vehicle, there were no major changes to the jlifitt controls. He approved. The best innovations were always the
implest. EJficieno’ was always optimal.

Thorsen troopers released the fighter from its launch rails and Thorsen used the maneuvering thrusters to gent/), guide the vehicle from the storage module. He told his troopers he would use the particle cannon to decompress the platform’s remaining intact modules,’ then, when the danger of a peacemaker counterattack
tad been neutralized, the); could board.for the next phase ()f the mission.p>