Picard smiled, then turned his horse and started back the way he’d come. Kirk peered up at the top of the hill one last time, at the imitation of Antonia, and he knew that he’d made the right choice. He went after Picard, having no idea how the captain intended to get them to Veridian Three.
As they trotted forward, though, Kirk saw a brilliant white light suddenly blossom, as though emerging from the fabric of existence around them. The gauzy blue of the sky, the green of the trees, the flaxen hue of the switchgrass, all bled and faded. The field of white grew to envelop Picard and his horse, then engulfed Kirk and Tom Telegraph as well. For a subjectively immeasurable span of time, he could see nothing, could hear nothing, could sense nothing. Even the feel of his own body vanished, as though he existed only as thought. He wanted to run but had no legs, wanted to scream but had no voice-And then with dizzying swiftness, the force of gravity held Kirk. Light shades of brown formed before his eyes, and a hot, dry wind brushed the flesh of his face. He smelled the dust of the arid region, tasted the grit of the air. The rapid change of place unsettled him.
He took a moment to steady himself, no longer on horseback now but on foot, and then suddenly an explosion boomed not far behind him. He turned from the sandstone wall he had been facing to see a cloud of dust rising before a stone ridge twenty-five meters away. Debris showered down upon the rocky topography like rain. Kirk thought he saw motion at the base of the cloud, a quick flash of red and black, but it seemed to disappear behind an outcropping.
He stepped forward, thinking he knew the source of the movement, but then through the daylight shrieked two bright green pulses, the discharge of an energy weapon. Kirk threw himself backward as the shots pounded into the same stone ridge where the previous explosion had taken place. A huge force field blinked orange above the area as another cloud of dust went up and a huge slab of rock tumbled side-over-side to the ground.
As more rubble peppered the area, Kirk waited. The source of the blasts remained hidden from view around the rocky mountain by which he stood. Seconds passed, and then a minute. He surveyed the ragged terrain, strewn with rocks and boulders, cut with fissures and grooves. When he saw and heard nothing, he prepared to move, to try to find Picard or this Soran of whom the captain had spoken. But then a hand appeared on the edge of a crevice that ran across the landscape in front of Kirk. He stepped up to it and peered down to see Picard climbing upward. They made eye contact, and Kirk lowered himself to his knees and helped the captain up.
“I take it that was Soran firing at you,” Kirk said.
“It was,” Picard confirmed. “He’s got that handheld weapon, but he’s alone here. If we go at him from two sides, one of us should be able to stop him.” As Picard gazed in the direction from which the energy fire had come, he explained that Soran had briefly experienced the nexus himself eighty years ago, aboard one of the very transports that the skeleton crew of the Excelsior-class Enterprise had endeavored to save. Prior to that, Soran had lost his entire family in an unprovoked attack by a brutal alien species, and apparently the nexus had allowed him to overcome the pain of that terrible loss, at least while he’d been within it. Having been swallowed up himself by the timeless other-space and subjected to its effects, Kirk found that eminently understandable.
According to Picard, after Soran had been beamed from the transport, and consequently from the nexus, he had then spent the ensuing decades searching for a safe means of reentering it. The energy ribbon, which made a circuit through the galaxy every thirty-nine years, functioned as a doorway into the nexus. Soran had developed a scheme to reroute the path of the ribbon so that it would intersect the surface of a world-this world, Veridian Three. In order to accomplish that, he had deployed a trilithium weapon of his own design to collapse a star, Amargosa, thereby affecting the gravity in this sector. Now, he intended to do the same thing to this system’s star. After Soran had then made it back into the nexus, the shock wave resulting from the destruction of Veridian would tear apart each of its six planets, including the fourth, home to a preindustrial society numbering two hundred thirty million.
“Soran has covered these crags with a complex of platforms, bridges, and ladders,” Picard said. “It appears that he’ll launch his trilithium missile, then make his way to the highest platform to wait for the ribbon to sweep him up into the nexus.”
“How much time have we got?” Kirk asked.
“Minutes only,” Picard said.
“Then let’s go.”
Kirk threw his closed fist through the scaffolding, catching Soran on the side of his face. The white-haired man fell backward and off the top of the rocks, fifty meters or more above the ground. Kirk heard him grunt once, but Soran did not scream.
As quickly as he could, Kirk extricated himself from the web of metal bars that held up the platform at the apex of the rock formation. As he did, he saw Picard clambering back up from where he’d tumbled during their hand-to-hand struggle with Soran. “I thought you were going for the launcher,” Kirk said to him. In fact, by returning when he had, Picard had prevented Kirk’s death at the emitter end of Soran’s handheld energy weapon.
“I changed my mind,” Picard said. “Captain’s prerogative.” Together, they started back down from the summit, heading for the trilithium missile that sat poised to take flight. As they reached that level and approached the launcher, though, Kirk heard a low whooshing sound from ahead, and he looked over to see the bronze missile fade into nothingness, obviously cloaking. More important, the launcher and its control panel also vanished.
Suddenly, Kirk heard another noise, above and to his left. He peered over and saw Soran falling down the side of the cliff face at the end of a rope, which he’d evidently grabbed hold of when he’d fallen. Now, he slid down fifteen meters, then jerked to a stop. A small object flew from his hands, clattered along the rocks, and landed atop one of the metal bridges constructed here.
“We need that control pad,” Picard said, clearly concluding that Soran had used it to cloak the missile. They started for the device at once, Kirk in the lead. As he reached the bridge, though, Picard said, “Captain, look!” Kirk glanced up and immediately saw the source of Picard’s concern. “Where’s Soran?” Against the sheer rock face, the rope now hung empty. Either Soran had fallen or he’d found his way to safety.
It didn’t matter. With time running out, they had little choice in how to proceed. Kirk turned and pointed back toward the location of the missile. Picard nodded and started for it, while Kirk hurried across the bridge toward the control pad.
Suddenly a pulse of green light flashed from below. It passed beneath the bridge, and Kirk turned to see it strike the rocks behind him, creating a momentary fireball. Before he could do anything, Soran corrected his aim and sent a pair of energy bursts slamming into the center of the bridge in front of Kirk. He felt the blasts as they rent the metal structure in two. Kirk reached for a pole at the side of the bridge, wrapping one arm around it as the surface beneath his feet fell. Both ends of the bridge remained attached to the rocks, though, depending from them at steep angles.
Expecting another blast from Soran’s energy weapon at any moment, Kirk didn’t wait, but began pulling himself up along the chains that hung between the poles at the sides of the bridge. As he did so, he saw Picard rushing back down from the missile platform, obviously to help him. Kirk pulled his knees in and used his feet to push himself upward from one of the poles. Above, he saw Picard positioning himself at the end of the bridge and preparing to reach down to him. Kirk took hold of the upper chain with his left hand and maneuvered himself onto his back, then reached his right hand up toward Picard.