ST TOS - 040 - Final Frontier by Diane Carey

Author:Diane Carey [Carey, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Kirk; George Samuel (Fictitious Character), Science Fiction, Fiction, April; Robert (Fictitious Character), General
ISBN: 9780671696559
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 1988-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

PART III

Strange New Worlds

Chapter Fourteen

SORROW MARRED THE sympathy on McCoy’s face, tainted even further by guilt. Did he have any right to talk the captain into changing his mind? Did anyone have the right to demand, or even request, the sacrifice of another person’s lifetime? Part of Jim Kirk would always be the captain of the starship. Part of him would remain trapped back in time, where the anguish lived. Other parts of him lived in other places, places and people he had touched over his years of command, people whose lives he had changed by making decisions, by taking his responsibility seriously and doing more than just steering the starship through her missions.

McCoy closed his mouth, having said nothing. In any other condition he could have mocked the self-pity he saw in the captain’s eyes, would have scolded him for getting things out of proportion, would have brought him a drink and insisted he count to twenty before thinking such a thing again.

But he said nothing. His usual cynicism was crushed back. Because he had been the cause of all this.

From the edge of the loft opening, Jim Kirk anticipated McCoy’s objections.

“It isn’t this incident alone,” he said. “But it’s made me aware that I’ve been hiding from myself. I’ve been faking my way through incident after incident since I took command. How long before the odds catch up with me and history is ruined or a civilization is crushed? How long before I make a mistake too big to correct?” He shook his head and squinted into the sunlight. “No more.”

McCoy huffed out his frustration and jabbed a finger at the papers Kirk was holding. “What’s in those damned letters, Jim? Why are they making you talk like this?”

Kirk looked down at the letter he’d been reading when McCoy intruded on the sanctity of the loft. He found the spot where he’d stopped reading, and tried to imagine his father’s voice speaking the words …

An odd letter. So many things packed into it. As though his father had been trying to stuff all his feelings for the future into one envelope. And what was that last statement supposed to mean?

Looking at the words with adult eyes, Jim Kirk noticed a difference in the handwriting. A sloppier effort. Or a more reckless one? Or maybe the words had come too fast for neatness. Or they’d been more important than the neatness. And his father had been a military man; he liked things neat. He liked them simple.

Nothing simple here. In fact, this letter had turned disjointed, had lost its direction and its purpose of just keeping contact with two kids back on Earth. Kirk detected an urgency as he read the letter now. He saw that it wasn’t very articulate, not the kind of words a ten-year-old and a fourteen-year-old would really understand. He tried to remember if he and his brother had felt any difference in the letters twenty-five years ago, and drew a blank. The elation of getting letters at all had been enough for the two boys who adored a man they hardly saw.

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