STAR TREK: The Original Series - The Last Roundup Read online

  “Isn’t it funny,” said McCoy softly, “how old phrases just don’t want to die? ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian’ could maybe be forgiven when uttered by a prejudiced, frightened white soldier a few hundred years ago. But I can’t believe I’m hearing it from the lips of a Starfleet officer.”

  Blue eyes blazing, McCoy turned Kingston loose [39] with a grant of disgust. “You slip up one more time, and you’re off this team.”

  The blond man’s lip curled. “You can’t do that,” he said.

  “The hell I can’t. This was my project from the beginning. You’re here because you’re a top-notch surgeon. But I’m beginning to think you’re not such a great human being.”

  He turned and stalked off, following the rest to the break area.

  Damn, damn. You think you’ve come so far, learned so much as a species, and then something like this happens.

  As the late, greatly lamented Chancellor Gorkon said at that ill-fated dinner aboard the Enterprise not so long ago, “I can see we still have a long way to go.”

  Chapter Four

  THE SAN FRANCISCO skyline was beautiful at night, and Kirk stood for a while simply gazing at it.

  He was completely, utterly, and thoroughly bored.

  He had returned to Earth two days ago and had bid an unfortunately temporary farewell to a clingy Skalli. Standing Crane, as she had warned, was far too busy even for a quick drink at Gaston’s. Spock, Uhura and McCoy of course were so deeply entangled in the peace negotiations that they could barely spare a moment to chat, although Spock had told him that things were progressing surprisingly well. Sulu, lucky devil, had his own ship now and was off somewhere captaining it. Kirk had messages in to both Chekov and Scotty, but so far, they hadn’t responded.

  Everyone, it seemed, was terribly busy. Except for one James T. Kirk. He rattled the ice in his Scotch and took another sip.

  His door buzzed. Kirk glanced at the chronometer. It was after midnight. Who could it be at this hour?

  [41] Whoever it is, he thought grimly, is welcome ... unless it’s Skalli.

  “Come in,” he called, not bothering to see who it was.

  The door hissed open and two handsome blond men stood in its frame. One was in his mid-thirties, well built and solid looking. The other, who hung back a little, was younger and slighter. They looked familiar, but Kirk couldn’t place them at once.

  Then the older one of them smiled, and the memory clicked into place.

  “Hi, Uncle Jim,” Kirk’s nephew, Alexander, said.

  “Good Lord,” Kirk said, feeling a smile stretch across his face. “Alex ... Julius ... come in, come in! Is it really you?”

  They stepped inside. “Nice place,” said Julius, the youngest of Kirk’s three nephews. How old was he now—twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?

  A long, uncomfortable moment ensued as the three men regarded one another. Had they been the youngsters Kirk remembered, he’d have known what to do—fold them into a big, avuncular hug. But they were men, not boys, and it had been so long since he’d seen them. ...

  It was Alex who broke the ice by suddenly laughing and embracing his uncle. Alex was now bigger than Kirk, taller and broader, and Kirk felt a distinctly odd sensation that was both familiar and completely strange. Slowly, he reached up and returned the hug. He had a sudden, painful flashback to when he had first embraced his son David. He forced that memory down. David was dead, killed by—

  —(Klingons)—

  [42]—a madman. Alexander and Julius were here, alive, and it felt very, very good to see them.

  Julius forestalled an embrace by extending his hand, smiling stiffly. Kirk grasped the hand.

  “I suppose it has been a bit too long for you to want to hug your Uncle Jim, Julius,” he said as gently as he could.

  Julius’s smile froze on his lips. “I wasn’t trying to—” he began. Kirk held up a hand, forestalling his comment.

  “You look good, both of you. I saw your brother just recently.” Peter, the eldest son of Kirk’s late, beloved brother Sam, was active in Starfleet Diplomatic Corps. While not part of the group that had been selected to travel to the Klingon homeworld, Peter was nonetheless heavily involved in the peace process. He and Kirk had managed to grab a few moments for a cup of coffee together before their respective duties had called them away. It was, unfortunately, a very typical encounter for both of them.

  Julius didn’t react, but Alex brightened visibly. “Peter! How is he? We don’t hear from him much.”

  Kirk heard the unspoken word “either,” but ignored it. “He’s doing very well. Quite active in the peace negotiations. Have a seat, both of you. What can I get you?”

  Julius nodded at the small glass of amber fluid Kirk was carrying. “That Scotch?”

  “Indeed it is. A parting gift from my chief engineer. You can practically cut the peat.”

  A quick, genuine smile flitted across Julius’s sharp [43] features, softening them for an instant. “Sounds perfect. Neat, please.”

  Kirk turned to the bar and poured Julius two fingers’ worth of the twenty-four-year-old Bunnahabhain. “How about you, Alex? Scotch, wine ...” He turned with a smile. “Romulan ale?”

  Alex looked puzzled. “I thought that was illegal,” he said.

  “It is, but you don’t look official to me.” A thought crossed his mind. “And if you are, that was just a joke.”

  Alex laughed. “No, we’re not official, Uncle Jim. I’ll just have some ice water with lemon, thanks.”

  Kirk finished preparing the drinks, then handed them to his nephews. “To family reunions,” he toasted, lifting his glass. Both young men did likewise, and then each took a sip. Kirk sat in a chair opposite Alex and Julius.

  “I must confess, I’m quite surprised to see you two, especially at this hour,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  The Kirk brothers looked at each other. Julius, who was sitting on the arm of the couch, sat back a little, swirling his scotch. Alex put his glass of water down on the coffee table and leaned forward.

  “I didn’t think you’d think it was just a social call,” he said. Kirk smiled faintly and took another sip. Alex ran a hand through his thick fair hair and laughed uneasily. “For months I’ve rehearsed this, and now that I’m here, it’s all gone right out of my head.”

  “We’re all family here,” Kirk said. “Speak from the heart, Alex. It’ll come out all right. Trust me.”

  Alex licked his lips and looked down at his entwined [44] hands. He took a deep breath. “We, uh, didn’t see much of you after Mom and Dad died. And I know that it wasn’t your fault. I mean, you were a captain of a starship, and they don’t let you take families with you on those. We couldn’t go with you, even if you’d wanted us, and we know that. Peter was at the starbase for so long and then went back to Earth with Grandma and Grampa. And we stayed with the Pearsons on Rigel VI.”

  Kirk regarded his nephew steadily. “I know all this, Alex. Why are you mentioning it now?”

  “Because the Pearsons treated us like cattle,” said Julius unexpectedly. “And we’ve been on our own for the last several years. Something you might have known if you’d bothered—”

  “Julius!” snapped Alex, his mild face flushed and angry. At once, his younger brother subsided.

  Kirk was immediately attentive. “Alex ... were you and Julius abused in any way?”

  “Oh, no, Uncle Jim, nothing like that. But it was clear that we weren’t wanted. I don’t think they realized how much of a handful we would turn out to be! So when I was twenty I ... well, I just took Julius with me and left. They didn’t seem to care too much. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, we’ve been doing a lot of traveling, and over the years we realized what we really wanted: a home.”

  Guilt warred with indignation within Kirk. Alex had been right—even if he’d wanted to adopt his three nephews, which he was unhappily certain he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to. There was no place for childr
en aboard a starship. And then one thing led to [45] another, and the next thing he knew he had contacted the Pearsons and they told him that Alex and Julius were all grown up and striking out on their own as young men.

  He’d sent a message on each of their birthdays, every year, along with what he hoped were suitable gifts. Every time he’d been near Rigel VI, which wasn’t often, he’d arranged to visit them. He had adored his big brother, George Samuel Kirk, but even they had fallen out of touch once they had reached adulthood. The Kirks just weren’t a close-knit family, that was all there was to it, especially with their divergent interests that took them all over the galaxy.

  But this revelation about the Pearsons disturbed him greatly. “I didn’t know that you weren’t happy,” he said. “You were visiting the Pearsons when your parents died, and it seemed the right place for you. You have a home here, with me, if you want it.”

  “It’s all right, Uncle Jim. We don’t want to move in!” Alex forced a laugh. The turn of the conversation was clearly as uncomfortable to him as it was to Kirk. “We want our own home. Our own place. And we’ve met with many others who share our vision.”

  He leaned forward, his eyes sparkling. “Uncle Jim, we want to found a colony.”

  Now I understand, Kirk thought. They want me to pull some strings and find them a suitable place. The thought that they had sought him out not for his own sake, but what he could do for them, pained him a little, but he supposed he couldn’t blame them. Clearly they, too, thought of him not as a person, not as Uncle Jim, but the Great Captain James T. Kirk.

  [46] “I’ll see what I can do,” he began. “Most of Starfleet’s attention is on this conference, and they’re not going to be able to spare a lot of people to help you find a place.”

  “Oh, no, you’ve got it all wrong,” Alex said. “We’ve found a planet already.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “It’s in the Besar system, very remote, freely donated as a goodwill gesture by a race that is negotiating with the Federation for admittance. I call it ... Sanctuary.” His face softened and his eyes lost focus. “It’s beautiful, Uncle Jim. We’re going to make it our own little corner of paradise. Here’s a list of those who have already agreed to go.”

  Alex handed Kirk a padd and Kirk quickly scanned the names. The list of scientists and engineers was lengthy, and most of them were renowned for their cutting-edge discoveries and developments. Whatever else this colony might be, it would certainly be very high-tech.

  “Alex, I’m impressed. You seem to have the cream of the crop here.”

  “Yes, we do,” Alex continued eagerly. “There aren’t that many ideal places out there anymore, as I’m sure you know.”

  “How fortunate that these ... who’s donating the planet?”

  “Falorians.”

  “That’s the second time this week I’ve heard their name crop up,” Kirk said. “A friend of mine greeted their diplomatic delegation. Very friendly, very curious, [47] is that correct?” He tried and failed to get Standing Crane’s story of the Falorian scooping out a fingerful of every spice in Starfleet Headquarters’ banquet kitchen out of his mind.

  “Oh, yes,” Alex said. “So open-handed.”

  “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” Kirk reminded him.

  “I know that,” Alex said, and bridled a little. “It’s obvious that they’re hoping to win favor for their admittance by letting us have the colony. And we’ve negotiated certain rights to anything we might learn. Not all, of course,” he hastened to add. “They’ve never had any desire to colonize it themselves or else they’d have done so centuries ago. It works out to be a good thing for everyone involved.”

  “How did you manage to snag this gem of a world?” Kirk wanted to know.

  “It’s all thanks to Julius,” Alex replied, turning to regard his brother with affection. “He’s been amazing. I’ve been working hard to get people to sign on for it, but he’s been the one out there talking to all kinds of alien races to find us our Sanctuary.”

  Julius flushed a little—that pale coloring didn’t serve him well—and looked down at his empty glass as if he wished there were more Scotch in it.

  “Really?” Kirk said, trying to not sound too surprised. “Starfleet has a whole section with dozens of people devoted to that kind of wrangling. How did you manage it on your own?”

  Julius’s jaw tensed almost imperceptibly and Kirk wished he could rephrase the question. “This is the [48] culmination of many years of discussions with many different species, Uncle Jim. Let me assure you Alex and I have had our share of false starts and deals falling through. We were able to contact the Falorians at the right time, when they were trying to look good to the Federation.”

  “So, luck, skill, and hard work, is that what you’re saying?”

  Julius shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  “A wise man once said, the harder you work, the luckier you get,” Kirk said. “It sounds to me as if you are both very lucky, from that standpoint. Tell me a little more about ... about your vision, Alex.”

  Those were apparently the magic words, for Alex lit up immediately. “You’ve seen the list I gave you. You know these people, what they’re known for, their personalities.”

  “Iconoclastic geniuses might not be too strong a term,” Kirk said.

  “Individualists,” Alex insisted. “Dreamers who can back up their dreams with concrete realities. But we don’t want to just hand over the results of our hard work to someone else—we want it for our own. We’ll share everything, for the betterment of all peace-loving species, but we won’t just surrender what we know, what we’ve made, without long, careful thought. And we’ll make sure it’s all used for the right purposes. We’ll make sure our knowledge doesn’t ever fall into the wrong hands.”

  Kirk felt a quick stab of pity for Alex’s naïveté. He’d been that idealistic once. He thought of Oppenheimer, of [49] Lu Wang Hu, of the Vulcan teacher Sekur. All of them had used their genius to break barriers; all of them had eventually seen their creations turned into weapons of mass destruction. He hoped this wouldn’t happen to Alex.

  “We’re taking as our inspiration the Amish and the Quakers,” Alex was saying. “They’ve made it through centuries still holding onto their ideals of nonviolence. So can we.”

  “The Amish don’t exactly approve of cutting-edge technology,” Kirk reminded him.

  Alex laughed. “No, that’s true. But we don’t have to be Amish to respect them and learn from their wisdom.”

  Kirk gestured with the padd. “And all these famous people have agreed to this?”

  “Absolutely. We are committed to this, Uncle Jim.”

  Kirk looked at him for a long moment. “Your father would be so proud,” he said quietly. “Of both of you,” he added, including the more withdrawn Julius as well as the open, talkative Alex.

  “I wish you both all the luck in the universe,” Kirk continued.

  Alex and Julius exchanged amused glances. “He hasn’t figured it out yet,” Julius said with a slight smirk.

  “Figured what out?”

  “Uncle Jim,” Alex said, “We didn’t come all this way and show up at your door at midnight just to tell you about our colony. We came to ask you to come with us.”

  Chapter Five

  “OUT OF THE QUESTION,” Kirk said automatically. “I have responsibilities here. I can’t just go galloping across the galaxy as if I were your age again.”

  “Why not?” The question was uttered in absolute innocence and Alex seemed genuinely puzzled by his uncle’s abrupt refusal. “You could help us so much. You have so many years of experience!”

  “Experience in captaining a starship, yes,” Kirk said. “Experience in protecting and defending a colony from hostile forces. But I don’t know how much use I’ll be to you and your people. What could I possibly do?”

  “You could give me excellent advice,” Alex said promptly. “You could help Julius with the Falorians.” He g
rinned sheepishly and added, “And if I may be frank, having someone with your reputation join the colony will be a real feather in our cap. It would give us a great deal of legitimacy in the Federation’s eyes, some negotiating clout when it comes to that.”

  “Please come, Uncle Jim.” Surprised, Kirk turned to [51] look at his youngest nephew. “We’ve worked so hard. It would mean so much to Alex ... to me ... if you would come with us.”

  “Worried about your old uncle, is that it?” Kirk asked. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m not ready to be farmed out to pasture just yet, thank you very much.”

  “Then what are you doing right now?” Julius challenged. He leaned forward. His blue eyes were intense in his lean face, his body taut with emotions Kirk couldn’t quite decipher. “Don’t you think we’ve been keeping tabs on you? We needed to know if you’d be in a position to even consider our offer, and you most certainly are.”

  “Juley—” began Alex, worried.

  “Don’t ‘Juley’ me, not now, Alex,” Julius shot back. “We’re too close to let him stop us.”

  Kirk began to speak. “Julius, I can understand—”

  “Shut up!” cried Julius, startling both his brother and his uncle into a momentary silence. “You have no idea what we’ve been through the last few years, Uncle Jim. No idea. You don’t know the, the begging and pleading Alex has had to do, the crawling through mud and getting sick and being literally scared for my life half the time that I’ve done to get this thing to fly. We’ve got names, we’ve got backing, we’ve got a beautiful, unspoiled world owned by friendly aliens, and the last piece of the puzzle is you.”

  He paused, swallowing hard, then continued. “It was part of the dream from the beginning, having us all together again. We know we can’t get Peter. We know what he’s dealing with and as peace-loving people [52] ourselves we have respect for that. But you’re done, Uncle Jim. You’re hanging around Starfleet hoping they’ll toss you a bone, and all they’ve done is given you classes at the Academy. I heard about your “Command Decisions and Their Consequences” class. The kids loved it, but I bet it rankled, having to stand up in front of a class and just talk about the glory days instead of living them.”