Kirk ran in front of another automobile, earning him another beep of a horn, but he paid it little attention. He leaped the curb in front of the mission just as Spock arrived there. “What is it?” the first officer asked.
“McCoy,” Kirk said, pointing to the front doors. “He’s in- ” He stopped in midsentence as he looked toward the mission and saw the doctor emerging from within. “Bones!” he yelled, and he rushed toward his old friend.
“Jim!” McCoy called. Kirk embraced Bones, saying his nickname again, almost as though trying to confirm his presence here. Beside them, Spock had reached for McCoy’s hand, and now the two shook enthusiastically, a rare show of emotion for the Vulcan.
“I’m so happy to see you two,” Bones said. As he spoke, Kirk peered back toward Edith. He saw that she had started walking back across the street, her eyes focused on the trio in front of the mission. Without looking, Kirk heard the sound of an approaching vehicle, and in an instant, he knew that the time had come. “I didn’t know where I was, or how I got here,” McCoy began, but he stopped as Kirk stepped away from him and back across the sidewalk.
Kirk staggered forward even as both of his friends yelled to him. “No, Jim!”
Kirk stopped at the curb. “Edith- ” he said, the single, desperate word not much more than a whisper. Edith continued walking toward him, seemingly unaware of the danger. Kirk wanted to go to her, wanted to throw himself into her path and save her from her fate, no matter the consequences.
Instead, he stood there.
And then somebody bumped him from behind, attempting to push past him. Kirk knew it had to be McCoy. He raised his arm to block the doctor’s progress, then turned and threw his arms around his friend. Unable to watch, Kirk buried his head atop McCoy’s shoulder, his eyes slammed shut. He heard the whine of tires on the street, and then he heard Edith scream. He did not even recognize her voice, but then a terrible sound reached him as her head struck the pavement.
That quickly, Kirk had lost everything in his life that could have been.
The beat of footsteps went up as people rushed to the scene of the accident. Kirk couldn’t move, couldn’t even open his eyes. The pain of his loss pressed in on him, filled him, and he wanted nothing more in that moment than to let go, to crumple lifeless to the ground beside his beloved.
“You deliberately stopped me, Jim,” McCoy accused him, and Kirk realized that he still held on tightly to the doctor. He opened his eyes as McCoy continued his indictment. “I could have saved her,” he said. “Do you know what you just did?”
Kirk pushed away from McCoy then, lurching over to the front doors of the mission. There, he leaned heavily against the jamb. What have I done? he thought, and even though he knew the answer, it didn’t matter; he knew that the question would remain with him always.
“He knows, Doctor,” he heard Spock say. “He knows.”
Kirk felt empty and weak. He clenched his fist, fighting just to maintain his equilibrium. In his mind’s eye, though, all he could see was Edith’s face.
EIGHTEEN
2293/2371
Within the mysterious mists of the Guardian, the events of Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s life played out once more. Jim Kirk had completed his preparations for the journey to come, taking the shuttlecraft out of the crater and hiding it in the base of a deep crevice. He then fixed its engines to explode in a way that would leave behind as little evidence as possible, then beamed back to the Guardian of Forever. There, he watched closely, waiting for the right moment. When it came, he jumped through the time vortex.
As he landed softly on a rocky surface, he saw a sandstone wall rising before him. A hot, dry wind blew past, bringing with it the scent of dust and the grit of the air. He turned and peered out across the rocky terrain, recognizing the surface of Veridian Three from the images he’d seen within the Guardian. He looked for any sign of Picard or Soran, but then an explosion ripped apart a stone ridge twenty or twenty-five meters away. Rubble rained down on the landscape as a cloud of dust rose into the air. Through it, Kirk thought he saw movement, a dash of color, red and black, but then it vanished behind other rocks.
He stepped forward, believing that he’d just seen Picard. Suddenly, two bright green pulses screamed through the air, obviously shots from an energy weapon. Kirk backed up against the sandstone wall, taking cover as best he could as the ridge where he thought he’d seen Picard exploded again. Above it, the orange spark of a massive force field blinked on and off. On the ridge, a rock slab fell from its place and tumbled heavily to the ground.
More debris showered down around Kirk. He waited, not wanting to reveal himself to whoever had fired the weapon-Soran, no doubt. As the seconds ticked away, he watched the surrounding area, which offered numerous places to conceal oneself: fissures cut the ground and boulders stood tall all around.
Finally, unwilling to wait any longer for fear of failing in his mission, he started forward. But then he saw a hand appear at the edge of a crevice just in front of him. Cautiously, he stepped over to it and looked down. There, he saw Picard attempting to pull himself upward. The future captain of the Enterprise saw him and froze, clearly unsure what to make of another person here on Veridian Three.
“I’m here to help you stop Soran,” Kirk said. He bent down and reached for Picard’s hand. For a moment, the captain didn’t move, but then he seemed to make a decision and he allowed Kirk to take his hand and pull him out of the crevice. When Picard stood before him, Kirk said, “I’m- “
“Kirk,” Picard said, obviously bewildered by his realization. “James T. Kirk.”
“Yes,” he confirmed, and then he told an abbreviated version of the tale that his future self had offered. “When I was lost aboard the Enterprise-B,” he said, “I didn’t die. I was pulled into the nexus.” An expression of at least partial understanding seemed to dawn on Picard’s face. “I was able to leave it now, to come here and help you stop Soran from destroying the Veridian star and the two hundred thirty million on Veridian Four.”
“How is that possible?” Picard asked.
“I don’t know, but does it matter?” Kirk asked. “That was Soran firing at you just now, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” Picard said. He paused, and Kirk knew that he weighed the current circumstances as best he could. Kirk felt no need to try to convince Picard of his identity or his intentions, knowing that the captain would reach his own conclusions. One fact, he knew, would stand out for Picard: no matter who Kirk actually was, he could easily have subdued the captain when he’d stood over him a moment ago; instead, Kirk had helped him.
“Soran’s got a handheld energy weapon,” Picard said at last, “but he’s alone here. If we attack him from opposite sides, one of us should be able to stop him. The missile he wants to launch into the star is in that direction- ” He pointed. “- but he’s also got ladders and bridges and platforms scattered all over the mountainside.”
“How much time is there before he launches the missile?” Kirk asked.
“Soon,” Picard said. “Perhaps only a matter of minutes.”
“Then we’d better get going,” Kirk said.
Kirk leaped.
He felt the hanging section of bridge beneath him shake as he sprang forward across open space, and then he landed hard on the other side. He took hold of a chain there with one hand, pushing the fingers of his other hand through the grated surface and grabbing on there. That section of the bridge shifted and swayed, its metal components whining and cracking beneath the force of his landing and his continued weight on it. It dropped suddenly to an even steeper angle, and he quickly let go of the chain and clutched that hand through the grating as well.