1 The Marriage of True Minds Crushing Captain Kirk's windpipe was proving far easier than Spock had ever dared to imagine.
The captain of the I.S.S. Enterprise struggled futilely in the merciless grip of his half-Vulcan first officer. Kirk's fists struck at Spock's torso, ribs, groin. His fingers pried at Spock's hold, clawed the backs of the hands that were strangling him. Spock's grasp only closed tighter, condemning Kirk to a swift death by suffocation.
Killing such an accomplished officer as Kirk seemed a waste to Spock. And waste, as Kirk's alternate-universe counterpart had reminded Spock only a few days earlier, was illogical. Unfortunately, as Spock now realized, it was sometimes necessary.
Kirk's strength was fading, but his eyes were still bright with cunning. He twisted, reached forward to pluck Spock's agonizer from his belt -- only to find the device absent. Removing it had been a grave breach of protocol, but Spock had decided that willfully surrendering to another the means to let himself be tortured was also fundamentally illogical. He would no longer accede to the Terrans' obsessive culture of self-inflicted suffering. It was time for a change.
Marlena Moreau stood in the entryway of Kirk's sleep alcove, sharp and silent while she watched Spock throttle Kirk to death in the middle of the captain's quarters. There was no bloodlust in her gaze, a crude affectation Spock had witnessed in many humans. Instead, she wore a dark expression, one of determination tinged with regret. Her sleepwear was delicate and diaphanous, but her countenance was hard and unyielding; she was like a steely blade in a silken sheath.
Still Kirk struggled. Again it struck Spock how great a waste this was, and the words of the other universe's Captain Kirk returned to his thoughts, the argument that had forced Spock to confront the futility of the imperial mission to which his civilization had been enthralled. The other Kirk had summed up the intrinsic flaw of the Empire with brevity and clarity.
The illogic of waste, Mister Spock, he had said. Of lives, potential, resources...time. I submit to you that your empire is illogical, because it cannot endure. I submit that you are illogical, for being a willing part of it.
And he had been unequivocally right.
Red stains swam across the eyes of this universe's Captain Kirk. Capillaries in the whites of his eyes had ruptured, hemorrhaging blood inside the eye sockets. Seconds more, and it would be over.
There had been no choice. No hope of altering this Kirk's philosophy of command or of politics. His doppelganger had urged Spock to seize command of the I.S.S. Enterprise, find a logical reason to spare the resistant Halkans, and convince the Empire it was the correct course.
Spock had hoped he could achieve such an aim without resorting to mutiny; he had never desired command, nor had he been interested in politics. Science, reason, research...these had always been Spock's core interests. They remained so now, but the circumstances had changed. Despite all of Spock's best-formulated arguments, Kirk had refused to consider mercy for the Halkans. Even when Spock had proved through logical argument that laying waste to the Halkans' cities would, in fact, only impede the Empire's efforts to mine the planet's dilithium, Kirk had not been dissuaded. And so had come Kirk's order to obliterate the planet's surface, to exterminate the Halkans and erase their civilization from the universe.
To speak out then would have been suicide, so Spock had stood mutely by while Kirk grinned and chuckled with malicious self-satisfaction, and watched a planet die.
Now it was Spock's turn to watch Kirk expire in his grip, but Spock took no pleasure in it. He felt no sense of satisfaction, nor did he permit himself the luxuries of guilt or regret. This was simply what needed to be done.
Kirk's pulse slowed and weakened. A dull film glazed the captain's eyes, which rolled slowly back into his skull. He went limp in Spock's grasp and his clutching, clawing hands fell to his sides. Dead weight now, he sagged halfway to his knees. Not wanting to fall victim to a ruse, Spock took the precaution of inflicting a final twist on Kirk's neck, snapping it with a quick turn. Then he let the body fall heavily to the deck, where it landed with a dull thud.
Marlena inched cautiously forward, taking Spock's measure. "We should get rid of his body," she said. Stepping gingerly in bare feet, she walked over Kirk's corpse. "And his loyalists -- "
"Have been dealt with," Spock interjected. "Show me the device." He did not need to elaborate; she had been beside him in the transporter room when the other universe's Kirk had divulged to him the existence of a unique weapon, one Kirk had promised could make Spock "invincible." The device, which Marlena called the Tantalus field, had been the key to the swift rise of this universe's Kirk through the ranks of the Imperial Starfleet.
Marlena led Spock to a nearby wall, on which was mounted a trapezoidal panel. She touched it softly at its lower right corner, then at its upper right corner, and it slid soundlessly upward, revealing a small display screen flanked by a handful of buttons and dials.
"This is how you turn it on." With a single, delicate touch, Marlena activated the device. "These are the controls."
"Demonstrate it," Spock said. "On the captain's body."
He observed her actions carefully, memorizing patterns and deducing functions. With a few pushed buttons, she conjured an image of the room in which they stood. Some minor adjustments on the dials narrowed the image's focus to the body on the floor. Then she pressed a single button segregated from the others inside a teardrop-shaped mounting, and a blink of light filled the room behind them.
Marlena lifted her arm to shield her eyes, but Spock let his inner eyelids spare him from the flash. It was over in a fraction of a second, leaving him with a palpable tingle of electric potential and the lingering scent of ozone mingled with Marlena's delicately floral Deltan perfume. On the floor there was no trace of Kirk -- no hair, no scorch marks, no blood...not a single bit of evidence a murder had occurred. Satisfied, he nodded at Marlena, who shut off the device. "Most impressive," he remarked.
"Yes," she replied. "He let me use it a few times. I only know how to target one person at a time, but he told me once it could do much more, in the right hands."
"Indubitably," Spock said. The communicator on his belt beeped twice. He lifted it from its half-pocket and flipped it open. "Spock here."
"This is Lieutenant D'Amato. The ship is secured, sir."
One detail loomed paramount in Spock's thoughts. "Have you dealt with Mister Sulu?"
"Aye, sir," D'Amato replied. "He's been neutralized."
"Well done, Mister D'Amato. Spock out."
Spock closed his communicator and put it back on his belt. He crossed the room to a wall-mounted comm panel and opened an intraship PA channel. "Attention, all decks. This is Captain Spock. As of fourteen twenty-six hours, I have relieved Captain Kirk and assumed command of this vessel. Continue on course for Gamma Hydra IV. That is all. Spock out." He thumbed the channel closed and turned to face Marlena. "It would seem, for now, that circumstances favor us."
"Not entirely," she said. "Last night, Kirk filed a report with Starfleet Command about the alternate universe. He called its people anarchistic and dangerous...and he told Starfleet he suspected you of helping breach the barrier between the universes."
Her news was not entirely unexpected, but it was still unfortunate. "Did the captain speculate why I might have done such a thing?"
"No," Marlena said. "But he made a point of mentioning your attempts to convince him to spare the Halkans."
He nodded once. "It would have been preferable for there to be no official record of the other universe's existence," he said. "But what has been done cannot be undone. We must proceed without concern for details beyond our control." Looking into her eyes, he knew that, for now, she was the only person on the ship -- perhaps even in the universe -- whom he could really trust, but even her motives were not entirely beyond suspicion...at least, not yet. But if the Terran Empire and its galactic neighbors were to be spared the ravages of a brutal social implosion followed by a devastating dark age unlike any in recorded history, he would have to learn to trust someone beyond himself -- and teach others to do the same.
Picturing the shifting possibilities of the future, he knew he had already committed himself, and there was no turning back from the epic task he had just set for himself.
The great work begins.
"Congratulations, Captain," a passing junior officer said as he saluted Spock, who dutifully returned the gesture while continuing down the corridor to his new cabin.
Pomp and fanfare had never appealed to Spock. Pageantry had its uses in the affairs of the Empire, but aboard a starship it was a needless frivolity, a distraction ill afforded. He preferred to focus on tasks at hand, on the business of running the ship. The crew, sensing his mood, had obliged him. But the human compulsion to laud success was irrepressible, and he accepted it with stoic grace.
His ascendance to command, however, was only the second most compelling item of news aboard the Enterprise -- the crew was buzzing with hearsay of the alternate universe. Chief Engineer Scott, Dr. McCoy, and Lieutenant Uhura, despite having been ordered to secrecy during their debriefings, apparently felt liberated to speak freely of it now that Kirk had been assassinated. Spock had made no effort to curtail the rumors or to interdict the crew's personal communications. The truth was out; attempting to rein it in would be futile. It had a life of its own now, and he decided to let it be.
He ar...
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