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Antonia let the curtains fall back into place and looked back over her shoulder at him. “Are you trying to bribe me to move in with you?” she said, her tone now playful.

“If that’s what it takes,” Kirk said.

She turned in his arms to face him, reaching up and putting her own hands on his shoulders. “Jim, I’m serious about this,” she said. “I like being with you and I can even see us together in the future, but I don’t want to get completely involved only to have that taken away from me.”

“I’m not going back to Starfleet,” Kirk said. “I love you, Antonia.” And he did love her, even if she was not the love of his life—

Once more, he put a quick end to such thoughts.

“I love you too, Jim,” Antonia said. She kissed him, and he kissed her back.

Later, he would try to tell himself that he had never lied to her, not really, because at the time, he really hadn’t planned on going back to Starfleet. But then, that hadn’t been the worst of his lies.

SEVEN

(2271)/2270

Jim Kirk looked at his bloodied counterpart, the city of Mojave in the background, and he found that he couldn’t argue anymore. On a superficial level, on a selfish level, he wanted to remain here in the nexus. He wanted to undo the pain that he had caused Antonia, wanted to find happiness with her.

But the other Kirk had been right. Anything he did here would not be real. More than that, though, even if he could change the past that he had shared with Antonia, even if he could prevent himself from returning to Starfleet, it would make no difference. Starfleet had indeed been his excuse to break off his relationship with Antonia-to compel her to break it off with him-but there had been another reason that he hadn’t been able to stay with her: she wasn’t Edith.

“I’ll go,” Kirk said. “I’ll try to stop the converging temporal loop.”

“Thank you,” the other Kirk said.

He would try to stop the loop, but he also knew that he would need to do more than that. In addition to traveling back in time to attempt to prevent the shock wave, he would also have to ensure that the Enterprise-B still escaped the energy ribbon, and that Picard still managed to stop Soran from wiping out the population of Veridian IV-and he would have to accomplish all of that without altering the timeline. He understood the plan that the other Kirk had devised, but not the logistics of how to accomplish all of it. “When I leave the nexus,” he asked, “how do I reenter it?”

“You don’t,” the other Kirk said. “I only ended up here again by chance.”

“But your plan involves me taking action in twenty-two ninety-three and twenty-three seventy-one,” Kirk said. “If I can only exit the nexus once- “

“You’ll have to use another means to move safely and surreptitiously through time,” the other Kirk said.

“But how?” he asked. He had traveled in time on a number of occasions, most often by employing the light-speed breakaway factor, taking a starship racing at excessive speed toward a star, circling around it deep within its gravity well, and then pulling away from it in a slingshot-like movement. Even if after leaving the nexus Kirk could somehow acquire a vessel powerful and strong enough to achieve such a maneuver, he could hardly do all of that with any realistic expectation of remaining unobserved. The only other means he had used to travel through time-And suddenly he knew what had been planned by his alter ego, who then confirmed it: “The Guardian of Forever.”

Kirk could see it. The Guardian’s remote location, during a time prior to when it had been discovered, would allow him to move stealthily through time. Except that he foresaw a problem. “I’ll need to enter the Guardian in twenty-two ninety-three,” he said. “But- “

“I know,” the other Kirk responded. “The Klingons.”

On the bridge of the Enterprise, Kirk peered from his command chair at the main viewscreen. The view astern showed Starfleet’s now-empty Einstein research station receding into the distance as the ship sped away from it. A central, compacted sphere formed the main body of the facility, on the top and bottom of which extended a tapering spire. Its hull glistened blue, as though constructed of colored crystal. An arc of the brown planet about which it orbited showed in a corner of the screen.

Visible beyond the station, the gray shapes of the Klingon vessels Goren and Gr’oth continued their pursuit of the Enterprise. Each had a bulbous control section at the forward end of a long, narrow neck, which extended from an angular main body, on either side of which hung its shortened engine structures. The two warships would pass close to the Einstein station.

“Ten seconds,” announced Lieutenant Haines from the sciences station. Several minutes ago, Spock had gone down to engineering to assist Scotty in restoring the weapons and the shields. “Five seconds.”

“Now, Chekov!” Kirk ordered, leaning forward in his chair. At the navigation console, the ensign worked his controls. On the main viewer, Kirk watched as the Einstein station blew apart. The two Klingon vessels vanished for a moment behind the fiery explosion, which immediately began to die in the vacuum of space.

Kirk waited to see if his actions had brought his crew any closer to safety. The irony did not elude him that on the voyage back to Earth, the ship and crew might not make it on this, the last leg of their five-year journey. He held his breath as he gazed at the viewscreen.

The Goren emerged from the fading conflagration in pieces, the forward control section no longer attached to the main body of the ship. The two hulls spun through space, until they each exploded. In almost no time at all, nothing remained of the warship.

“Got him!” Chekov said, throwing a clenched fist into the air.

“Easy, mister, we’re not out of this yet,” Kirk told him. In mute testimony of that fact, the Gr’oth became visible on the viewer, still pursuing the Enterprise. But then blue bolts of energy suddenly erupted on the hull of the Klingon vessel.

“A piece of the station penetrated the Gr’oth’s hull,” Haines said, and Kirk saw part of one spire jutting from beneath the main body of the ship. “I’m reading heavy casualties. They’ve lost most of their systems, including shields and weapons, and their life support is faltering.”

“They’re now drifting,” Lieutenant Sulu said from the helm. On the viewscreen, the Gr’oth glided askew of its flight path. Clearly, the Enterprise and its crew had won the battle.

“Sulu, reverse course,” Kirk said. “Close to within transporter range.” With no weapons and no shields, with life support failing, the crew of the Gr’oth had transformed from dangerous attackers into survivors who needed rescue. He leaned in over the intercom on the arm of his chair, the channel still open from a few moments ago. “Mister Kyle, have our guests escorted to quarters- ” Just before the destruction of the Einstein station, its seventeen personnel had been beamed aboard. “- and then have security report to the cargo transporter. We may be taking on some prisoners.”

“Aye, sir,” Kyle said.

“Kirk out.” He pushed a button beside the intercom, closing the channel.

“Captain,” Lieutenant Uhura said from the communications station, “we’re being hailed.”

Kirk felt both frustration and anger swelling within him. “Now they want to talk,” he said. If the Klingons had been willing to do so before beginning their attack, then all of this-the destruction of the Starfleet vessels Minerva and Clemson, of the Einstein facility, and of the Klingon ships Rikkon, Vintahg, and Goren, along with the loss of hundreds of lives-could have been averted. “Put them on screen, Lieutenant,” he said.

“Aye, sir,” Uhura said.

On the main viewer, the image of the wounded Gr’oth disappeared, replaced by the interior of its bridge. Standing amid clouds of smoke colored green by their alert lighting, the Klingon commander glared forward. Kirk recognized him at once, not just from Starfleet security briefs, but from an encounter he’d had with him a couple of years ago aboard Deep Space Station K-7. The executive officer of the Gr’oth back then, Korax now commanded the ship. He had dark brown hair and a goatee, and he wore the regulation black and gold uniform of the Klingon Imperial Fleet.