As Captain Garth brought the U.S.S. Heisenberg out of warp and prepared to enter standard orbit around Axanar, the ship's helmsman shouted, "There's a Romulan vessel in orbit around the planet!"

On the bridge viewscreen, the winged shape of a Romulan vessel, a raptor hovering over its prey, was now clearly visible against the pale blue orb of Axanar.

Garth stood up from his command chair and said calmly, "Prepare to retreat. Go to maximum warp."

"Retreat?" his first officer asked, watching Garth with a look of apprehension in his dark, almond-shaped eyes.

"Yes, retreat. At once!" There was no doubt in Garth's voice.

The Heisenberg accelerated beyond the orbital velocity toward which it had been slowing, outpaced the pull of the planet's gravitational well in a wide curve, and shot into warp.

"The Romulan is chasing us," the helmsman said softly, "and we can't outrun it."

Garth glanced back at his communications officer, a green-skinned but nonetheless beautiful woman with a cap of short dark hair. "Lieutenant," Garth said, "send a subspace message to Starbase at Tau Ceti, informing them of the Romulan presence."

"Yes, sir," the young woman replied.

As the Heisenberg went to maximum warp, the Romulan vessel kept pace. Ten hours passed while Garth sat at his station, silent and unmoving, an enigma to his officers and crew, all of whom knew that the Romulan battle cruiser could not only pace their ship but also match its firepower.

Was their captain simply trying to avoid a battle? From his navigator's station, James Kirk turned in his seat and looked aft at Garth, but could read nothing in his commanding officer's cold blue eyes and impassive face.

In the tenth hour, the Klingon vessel, straining at the limits of its warp drive, began to overtake the Heisenberg.

"Captain Garth," a voice called out. Kirk raised his eyes to the viewscreen as the face of a Romulan captain appeared, looking very much like Mr. Spock. "I know that you are receiving my message. Drop out of warp and surrender, or we will destroy your ship."

"I hear you," Garth replied. Kirk turned toward the command station for a moment and saw that Captain Garth was smiling.

"Drop out of warp and surrender," the Romulan captain repeated, and then the image on the screen faded out.

"Bridge to engineering," Garth said. "I am ordering a complete and immediate warp shutdown."

"We canna do that, Captain," one of the officers in engineering called out over the intercom. "The engines canna take it. We'll be at their mercy if we--"

"Those are my orders," Garth said. "Shut it down now."

"Captain--"

"Now!"

The Heisenberg dropped out of warp, and Kirk realized that they were suddenly behind the Romulan vessel, which had come out of warp well ahead of Garth's ship. The Romulans would be confused now, seeing the Federation starship disappear without any of the usual deceleration signatures on their scan. But very soon the enemy would confirm that the Heisenberg was behind them, and the Romulan commander would open fire.

Garth would not fire upon the Romulans first; Kirk was sure of that. He would honor the book and wait until he was sure that his vessel was about to be attacked.

On the bridge viewscreen, the Romulan starship appeared.

Kirk noted the readings on his console. "Captain," he said, "enemy screen is down."

"Fire!" Garth shouted, knowing that the Romulan commander was about to do the same.

Kirk and the helmsman opened fire.

The Klingon cruiser blossomed into flame--

-- and Kirk awoke from his dream, with the fire-ball still in his brain...

He lay on his bed in the captain's quarters of the Enterprise, reflecting on the exactitude of his recurring dream and the meaning of past events.

Some years earlier, Captain Garth, the legendary Starfleet officer, had taken his starship to Axanar to stop an extremely bloody civil war between the two colonial settlements on that planet. At the heart of the conflict, Garth had discovered the presence of a Romulan mission. The Romulans had seen an opportunity to seize control of this star system near Tau Ceti, and thereby to encroach upon Federation space; the arrival of their battle cruiser had promised victory to one side, which could then hope to rule Axanar under Romulan patronage.

But inexplicably, Garth had ordered his starship to flee, and the Romulan vessel had given chase, its commander clearly fearful that the Federation vessel would alert Starfleet. The Romulans could not have understood or guessed at what Garth was up to, but could only hope to catch and destroy his vessel before it could send off a subspace alarm to the nearest starbase.

Kirk had studied the entire incident at Starfleet Academy. Garth of Izar had been the kind of officer destined to become a famed and admired figure, one whose military exploits were required reading and whose writings were part of the Academy's curriculum. After a ten-hour pursuit at top warp speed, with the Klingon cruiser gaining on the Federation vessel, Garth had executed what later became famous as the Cochrane deceleration maneuver. Under certain circumstances, although with a risk of some damage to the engines, warp drive could be suddenly shut down. A starship being chased by an enemy vessel would drop back and then abruptly appear behind her pursuers, prepared to fire upon an enemy baffled by the sudden disappearance of its prey. That was another tricky part of this maneuver, firing before the enemy ship could put up its shields. The decisive tactical advantage of reappearing without warning behind the enemy was worth the risk of damage from the sudden shutdown of the drive.

That was all there had ever been to the so-called Battle of Axanar, Kirk thought as he came fully awake. He often dreamed of Captain Garth's maneuver, and his dream was usually as accurate as the account that he had studied at the Academy, except in a few particulars. The Klingon captain of the battle cruiser could not have been Koloth, since he was not yet a captain at the time, and would live to challenge Kirk on the Enterprise on more than one occasion, most notably on Deep Space Station K-7. The first officer on the Heisenberg's bridge would also not have been the stocky, dark-haired man Kirk saw in his dream: Dr. Donald Cory, the governor of the asylum and penal colony on Elba II. And the communications officer with Garth at Axanar, according to records, had not been a green-skinned Orion, as was the woman in Kirk's dream; the officer he had dreamed of looked exactly like the ill-fated Marta, one of the inmates Kirk had encountered during his mission to Elba II a couple of years ago.

He thought of that unfortunate woman for a moment; the serum he had brought to Elba II, that had promised a cure for the few criminally insane inmates of the asylum, might have helped poor Marta control and conquer her murderous impulses and heal her tormented mind.

He pushed his memories of Elba II aside.

Garth's deceleration maneuver, Kirk mused, had possessed great tactical beauty, concealing a completely unexpected action. What a pity that, in all likelihood, it could only be done once. Now no one in command of a starship-class vessel would be taken in by such a ruse, which amounted to nothing more than being fooled into outpacing one's prey.

As he lay in bed, with some minutes left before he had to rise and prepare for return to duty, Kirk wondered again whether there might be some situation in which Garth's inspired move might be made to work again, if only one more time, before that particular circumstance also became so well known that it could never be repeated. It was a game that he played with himself, trying to summon a set of conditions in which the Cochrane Deceleration Maneuver might still succeed. He had once dreamed that he had found the answer, but could not remember what had seemed so clear in his dream.

As a consequence of Captain Garth's action, the warring colonies on Axanar had finally made peace; without the Klingon presence to tip the balance of power in favor of one side, the two antagonists had put aside their differences and signed perpetual accords. Kirk, although still a cadet, had shown enough promise to be chosen as a member of the Federation's peacemaking delegation to the planet, for which he had been honored with the Palm Leaf of the Axanar Peace Mission.

Kirk's time on Axanar had marked the beginning of his career as a Starfleet officer. It had also been the last great accomplishment on record of the supremely gifted Garth. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad; that was part of Garth's story, too.

As he got up and began to dress, Kirk thought of the legends that had later grown up around the Axanar crisis. Garth's maneuver had been of short duration, but many tales stretched the pursuit of his starship across the whole quadrant, while the resolution of Axanar's civil war was often described as a major Federation victory, with Garth leading the victorious Starfleet forces.

Had Garth known that his destruction of the Klingon vessel would also defuse the civil war on Axanar? Historians liked to debate that one, but the man who might have answered the question directly was beyond questioning -- at least he had been up to now. Kirk suspected that Captain Garth, had he been able, might have answered modestly by saying that he had not planned for any such result, had perhaps only guessed at how the struggle on Axanar might end, and had simply hoped for the best. Things might have turned out differently, with the two factions continuing their struggle even without a Klingon presence.

Kirk let out his breath as he straightened the sleeves of his uniform. He might soon be able to ask any questions he liked of the man he had so admired during his Academy days and had then come to fear during their violent encounter in the asylum on Elba II.

Garth, according to a recent message from Admiral José Mendez, was now in full recovery after his nearly two-year course of treatment. Dr. Cory had released him from the asylum at Elba II; indeed, with the success of the new serum and other innovative therapies, Cory was certain that the few remaining inmates of Elba II would soon be capable of leading normal and constructive lives. The governor would see the time when his asylum for criminally insane humanoids would at last be closed for good. Mendez was certain that Kirk would welcome the news.

Kirk was grateful for the message, but another question had immediately come to him: What kind of life could there now be for Garth of Izar, who had already lived one life as one of Starfleet's most brilliant officers and another as a murderous madman? Had his therapy healed him, or only made him into a man for whom there was no place, who would have to live on the margins of a society that might forever distrust him?

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