Within Kirk’s helmet, he heard the words of the dive controller, checking readiness. Kirk studied the readouts on the inside of his visor, then confirmed his status. The controller acknowledged, executed a scan of his own that he narrated, then initiated a countdown.
As Kirk listened to the numbers ticking down, he worked to keep his breathing and heart rate at acceptable levels. He felt more nervous than he’d expected to, particularly considering his long career in space and the several times that he’d had to perform extravehicular activities. Of course, his training had always essentially warned him away from circumstances similar to those upon which he was about to embark.
At last, the controller reached zero in his countdown. Kirk did not feel the acceleration, but he could at first measure his progress through the tube visually, though the surface of the metal around him soon became nothing more than a blur. His arms folded across his chest and held tightly against himself, he waited for the moment when he would leave the orbital platform.
When finally he shot out into space, the moment exhilarated him in a way even greater than he’d expected. He had launched into Earth’s night above the Arabian Peninsula. To his right, he saw a spectacular array of stars, seeming so close that he felt as though he could simply reach out and touch them. To his left, the planet of his birth spun through the void, sprawls of light sparkling across its surface.
Launched opposite the direction of the platform’s orbit, Kirk had actually been decelerated with respect to the planet’s surface. As he arced above the northern coast of Africa, he knew that he began to fall toward the Earth, though he could not immediately perceive that motion. The dive controller made contact with him, and Kirk quickly checked his readouts to verify his optimal status. He noted the transporter recall on the inside of his helmet showed green, available to him with a flick of his chin or tongue. Another had been placed within his right glove, he knew, on the back of his hand. Should he encounter any problems, he could be back within the orbital platform in just seconds, either through his own action or that of the controller, who would monitor his entire descent.
For nearly an hour, Kirk seemed to float free above the Earth. As many light-years as he’d traveled, as many exotic locales as he’d visited, he didn’t know if he’d ever seen a more breathtaking vista. He had been born on the great blue marble below him, and that fact counted for something on an instinctive level.
By degrees, he became aware of falling from space, the Earth growing larger below him. He examined his display and saw that indeed he’d begun to experience the effects of the atmosphere. He twisted his body around so that he would descend feet first.
As Kirk sailed across the coast of Morocco and out over the Atlantic Ocean, he saw the terminator ahead. The line separating day from night made it appear as though some great being had draped a curtain over the world there. Kirk soared in that direction, the atmospheric drag beginning to slow him more dramatically, his passage through the air growing noisy. He felt a slight increase in the heat within his dive suit, and a glance at his readings showed a sharp increase in its outer temperature. He peered down across his body and saw that the blue heat-resistant tiles lining the exterior of his suit had begun to glow red.
I’ve become a meteor, Kirk thought, imagining the view of his reentry from the ground.
It took nearly another hour for him to cross the ocean and the eastern coast of North America, finally approaching the heartland. His dive suit cooled as he slowed to terminal velocity. As he at last arrived in Kansas airspace, he changed his attitude once more, dropping facedown into a spread-eagle position. He felt the full resistance of the atmosphere now, and he used it to adjust his descent. He shifted his arms and legs based on the readings in his helmet, which now coordinated his location with respect to the homing beacon on the ground.
At four kilometers up, Kirk began paying strict attention to his altitude. Almost a minute later, one and a quarter kilometers above the ground, he deployed his parachute. His harness tugged slightly on his torso, but not nearly as much as he’d expected. He looked upward at his chute and saw that it hadn’t fully unfolded, its lines tangled. Kirk quickly moved his legs in a cycling motion, and almost immediately, the lines straightened and the rectangular parachute unfurled completely. The rush of the air quieted and a strange sort of peace enveloped him.
As he neared the ground close to his target, he saw Scotty and Chekov gazing skyward and pointing in his direction. Kirk steered near them, proud to have navigated so well to his landing zone. He peered directly beneath him as he came down the final dozen or so meters, and the ground seemed to jump up toward him in stages, his eyes unable to make total sense of what they saw without a dimensional referent.
His feet struck the ground hard, but he bent his knees and dropped, taking the impact without incident. He quickly turned to pull in his lines and gather his parachute, but he saw that Scotty and Chekov had already taken hold of the canopy and had begun to fold it together. After signaling his safe landing to the dive controller, Kirk reached up and pulled off his helmet.
“Right on target!” he told his friends excitedly. “I jump out over the Arabian Peninsula and I end up here, a quarter of a world away, right on the mark.”
“Actually, your precise target was thirty-five meters in that direction,” Chekov said with a smirk, pointing. He and Scotty handed the condensed fabric of the parachute to Kirk, who hugged it to his chest.
“Thanks for mentioning that, Pavel,” Kirk said. “I’ve come twelve thousand lateral kilometers, so I think I’ll call this a bull’s-eye anyway.”
“Oh, well, twelve thousand kilometers,” Chekov said. “That’s even wider than Russia.”
Kirk looked to Scotty, who rolled his eyes at Pavel’s comment. “So how was it?” the engineer asked him.
“Amazing,” Kirk said. “Absolutely amazing. Let’s go get that dinner and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Perfect,” Scotty said.
A few minutes later, they had reached the airpod and Kirk had stowed his chute. By the time they reached Wichita, he’d slipped out of his dive suit and donned civilian clothes. The three men found a restaurant to their liking that overlooked the Arkansas River, and they sat and talked into the night.
On a day when Jim Kirk had jumped from orbit and traveled back down to Earth, it seemed appropriate that he felt as though he had suddenly reentered his own life.
Kirk stepped out of the turbolift and onto the bridge of the Enterprise-B. In the command chair, a young man-presumably Ensign Rousseau, the current officer of the deck-peered casually over his shoulder, but when he saw Kirk, he stood up and virtually snapped to attention. “Captain on the bridge,” he said.
Glancing around, Kirk had to suppress a laugh, even given the gravity of the situation that had brought him aboard this new Enterprise. Other than the young officer and himself, he saw only one other person on the bridge, a technician lying on her back, partially hidden beneath the combined helm and navigation stations that stood forward of the command chair. As Kirk looked on, she rolled out from under the console and rose to her feet.
“As you were,” Kirk told the two crewmembers.
“Yes, sir,” said the officer beside the command chair, though he did not move. Slight of stature, he had cropped blond hair and light blue eyes. The technician, dark haired and with a serious expression that seemed to reflect concentration on her work, immediately lowered herself back to the floor and resumed what she’d been doing.
Kirk gazed around the command center of this new Enterprise. Larger than the bridge of any of the vessels he had captained, it now sat largely dark, as did much of the ship. He had asked Admiral Sinclair-Alexander to allow him to come aboard so that he could tour the Enterprise-B, and he had so far done just that, visiting main engineering, sickbay, one of the mess halls, one of the gymnasia, and various other areas. In several places, technicians had been working busily, but in others, Kirk had found himself alone. He’d been sure to be seen by those present, though he’d avoided engaging in conversation with any of them. Though he recalled having very little contact with the Enterprise crew during the brief tour of the ship he’d taken with Scotty, Chekov, and members of the press during the launch, he did not want to risk one of them feeling comfortable enough to approach him and say something like, “Nice to see you again, Captain.”