U.S.S. DeGama
Donatu Sector, Coordinates Unknown
Terrestrial Date: December 25, 2269
2300 hours shiptime

"ALL HANDS, prepare for docking with enemy vessel in thirteen minutes, seven seconds."

Admiral James T. Kirk looked up from his coffee, tightening his hands around the warm mug in unconscious frustration. He wanted a window, or a viewscreen, or at least a place to stand on the high-speed courier's bridge. He wanted to know what DeGama's commander was thinking, how the ship was feeling as they nosed up to the alien security buoys, how the crew would react when their communications officer hailed the alien commander and requested permission to board. He wanted to be something more than a passenger waiting in a blind mess hall for word of how the mission was going.

You want to be the captain, he told himself reprovingly. But wanting that now wasn't realistic, wasn't fair. He'd given up the right to stride the cosmos when he'd accepted the promotion to admiral all those months before.

Kirk glanced up at the chronometer above the replicator array. 2304 hours. What was taking so long?

"Admiral. I see that my son's characterization of your behavior was more accurate than I gave him credit for."

Kirk turned from the chronometer with no real surprise, fitting a polite smile to his features even though he got no reciprocal expression from his companion. He occasionally had to remind himself that prolonged close quarters with aliens who might not appreciate manners was no reason to forsake them. "Spock served with me for a long time, Ambassador Sarek. I would expect him to amass some fairly accurate data as to my demeanor."

"Indeed." Sarek passed from the open doorway with the smooth, silent grace Kirk had learned to expect from Vulcans, even those as tall and powerfully built as the ambassador. His feet treading whisper-light on the bare deck, his robes barely brushing one against the other, Sarek rounded the long mess table to seat himself directly across from Kirk. The admiral straightened ever so slightly and pulled his coffee a fraction of an arm's length closer, as if the strong smell might be offensive to Sarek.

"Spock often remarked upon the human propensity to expend emotional energy on events which have not yet occurred. It was a behavioral trait Spock found fascinating for its illogic." Sarek folded his hands within the pools of brown fabric that made up his sleeves, lifting one eyebrow at Kirk's coffee mug without interrupting his speech. Kirk had always assumed Spock was collecting auxiliary information whenever he glanced at something that way. He wondered what the well-stained coffee mug told Sarek now. "I informed Spock that you were an unusually intelligent human being, with a clear understanding of temporal relations and your own inability to influence them." The ambassador cocked his head. "Was my assessment in error?"

"Not really, Ambassador, no." Kirk smiled ruefully and took a mouthful of his coffee. It was only lukewarm, and tasted bitter and stale. "I think we humans view worrying as a way of planning for the future -- of reminding ourselves of all the things that might happen because of what we do." Or don't do.

Something in the focus of Sarek's dark eyes shifted, constructing an echo of what Spock always displayed as a frown. "That is highly illogical. You cannot build models to any degree of accuracy based on..." Distaste tried but failed to turn down the corners of the ambassador's mouth. "... imaginary information."

Kirk smiled, then remembered that amusement might very well come across as rude, and concealed his humor in a sigh as he pushed away from the table. "Be that as it may, Ambassador, you'll never convince humanity of it. Besides..." He tipped the ruined coffee down the disposal bin. "It's not the future I'm worried about."

"The past is equally beyond your reach."

"Yes..." Kirk punched up a new mug of coffee, hotter and blacker than the last. "And so is the present."

Sarek said nothing while Kirk retrieved his mug, tasted it, and decided against adding sugar or cream. For some reason, anything approaching luxury seemed undeserved and sinful right now, considering the intergalactic war that might result from his failure here. He hadn't even let himself sleep since leaving Earth sixteen hours ago. It mattered to him that he be awake and aware for every moment of this last-minute gamble to prevent the galaxy from plunging into a conflict that none of them could survive. It also mattered that across the light-years of distance, Sulu and Chekov could have faith that their captain wouldn't abandon them to charges of treason and murder. Kirk sincerely hoped they knew that.

"Why do you persist in assuming responsibility for crimes other men have committed?"

Kirk snapped a startled look at the ambassador, then bit back the first angry words that filled his mouth. Sarek's face was as impassive as always, eyebrows lifted in the faintest indication of inquiry, head inclined as though listening intently for the most subtle meaning in every sound. Kirk's hostility guttered when confronted with the innocence of Vulcan curiosity.

"Because I'm their captain," he said, turning away from the replicator to pace the narrow room. "Because they're my crew."

"You were their captain," Sarek stated gently, as though correcting an equation for a child. He pivoted in his seat to follow Kirk's progress. "They are no longer your crew."

Kirk felt a searing flash of pain and anger, then couldn't decide if his emotions were reacting to the ambassador's coldness or the subject of the ambassador's discussion. "It's about more than my crew now -- it's about using my crew to try and destabilize the entire Federation. That makes it my concern." He stopped, matching his passionate stare to Sarek's stoic one, as if by sheer force of will he could make the Vulcan understand all the complicated feelings and beliefs that went into a human's convictions. "I won't stand by and let my crew be hurt. By anyone, for any reason."

"All hands, prepare for docking with enemy vessel in four minutes, four seconds."

An almost forgotten sense at the back of Kirk's brain confirmed the time estimate without his even being sure how he knew the DeGama's speed and direction. In contrast, Sarek glanced briefly at the intercom, then the chronometer, as if to verify the individual points in the data chain. "It is because of your service to my son and myself that I have made myself available for this negotiation," the ambassador said, bringing his eyes back to Kirk's. "However, I still fail to understand why you believe anything you do here -- or with your colleagues from the other side of the Neutral Zone -- can affect occurrences back on Earth."

"Because it has to." Because nothing Kirk could do on Earth would save everything, and he refused to choose between Sulu's and Chekov's lives and the Federation's future. Because taking daring risks had never failed him before, and he wouldn't accept that it would fail him now just because it wasn't his starship racing toward the rendezvous. Because if nothing he thought, or said, or did had any hope of setting right the horrible wrongs in motion back home, then everything he believed about life was a lie, and people really were nothing better than powerless flotsam on the mindless tides of circumstance. "It just has to," he said again, firmly enough to make it true.

"And if the war you seek to avert has already begun?"

Kirk swallowed more coffee and resumed his restless pacing, unwilling -- and unable -- to answer.

Copyright © 1990 by Paramount Pictures