Chapter One
Admiral Leonard H. McCoy, M.D., was too stubborn to die.
He was 149 years old. The total mass of implants in his body, including ceramic-composite hips, heart-boosters, and synthetic muscles, easily outweighed his original parts, and he wasn't complaining. He hadn't submitted to these admittedly experimental procedures because he was afraid of death. He'd lost that fear in his first five-year mission on the Enterprise. A few landing parties with Jim Kirk and death was something you came to know on a first-name basis. You also learned how to ignore it.
But after almost a century and a half of fighting the good fight, McCoy could no longer ignore the fatigue of battle. He was just plain tired. Because no matter how many skirmishes he had won, for himself and uncounted others, there was always that knowledge that in the end the war would be decided in the adversary's favor.
Here and now, in one of the most secure medical facilities on the entire Klingon homeworld of Qo'noS, he faced defeat once again. This time, the confrontation and its likely outcome asked more than he could bear.
The woman in the harshly angled stasis tube before him was dying, and with her, her unborn child. And like a black hole reaching out to engulf and destroy all that it touched, her death and the child's would inevitably sweep so many others down into the ultimate darkness.
One especially.
Jim Kirk.
The woman was Teilani of Chal. A deliberate mixture of Romulan and Klingon heritage, created with the genetic capacity to save her people in the event of the unthinkable -- total war between the empires and the Federation.
In time, the threat of that war had vanished, but Teilani did not squander her gift. A by-product of a war that never took place, she brought peace to her own troubled world and led it to full membership in the Federation. Then she brought peace to the Federation by risking her own life to help defeat the Vulcan Symmetrists.
But, most important, Teilani of Chal had brought peace to the tumultuous life of James T. Kirk.
She had been his equal in all that fueled Kirk's life. McCoy himself had seen them race their champion ordovers along the tropical beaches of Chal as if the universe existed for no other purpose than as an arena for their competition. The doctor had watched visual sensor records that showed Teilani sneakily edging past Kirk in the airlock of their shuttle to be the first to jump headlong into space in an insanely difficult orbital skydive.
And McCoy had seen fire of a different sort between the two.
Kirk and Teilani walking those same beaches they had raced across by day. But slowly, quietly, hand in hand, wordlessly sharing the moment of the ocean and the setting suns of the world that was their home.
Kirk and Teilani at one another's side in work as well. In the forest clearing where Kirk had labored to cut and fell the trees that made the walls and roof of their house, Teilani a vibrant force beside him, quick to pull a rope, shove a timber into place, or steal a kiss, tease a laugh.
That clearing on Chal, that hand-built house, that was where McCoy had last seen Kirk and Teilani together as they were meant to be. Embraced by their friends. Embracing each other. Celebrating their marriage and their future. Anticipating the greater blessing to come, in the promise of their unborn child alive in Teilani's swollen belly.
On that day, McCoy had seen in his friend's eyes a fulfillment he had never expected to see there. A peace McCoy had glimpsed only rarely before, whenever Jim Kirk took the center chair of his starship and gave the command to move on, to explore, to discover all that the universe had to offer. Yet command of a starship is a gift given only to a few, and never for long. And when the day had finally come for Kirk to stand down, McCoy had grieved for his old friend, fearing Kirk's life without command would be without purpose, nothing more than a hazy existence of idle distraction.
But that had been before Teilani.
More than a partner, a lover, a wife, or a mother to his child, Teilani caused Kirk's rebirth.
McCoy felt the sting of tears and did not wipe them away, not questioning how after a lifetime of loss, one more death could affect him so.
In all the years McCoy had known Kirk, he had never seen him more alive than he had the night that Kirk and Teilani joined in marriage.
And only hours later, McCoy had never seen Kirk so devastated than when he learned that the reason for his bride's collapse was that she had been deliberately poisoned.
"How much longer?" M'Benga asked.
McCoy wore a small, transparent lens over his left eye. It was an offshoot of the Universal Translator, providing visual translations of the Klingon readouts on the medical equipment. Klingon anatomy McCoy had finally mastered. But the Klingon language was another matter.
"Can't be sure," McCoy said. He knew he sounded as tired as he felt. "No more than twenty hours. Maybe as few as two."
"Can we save the child?" M'Benga asked.
Dr. Andrea M'Benga, great-granddaughter of McCoy's old colleague on the first Enterprise, placed her hand on the faceted observation port of the stasis tube. The gesture pleased McCoy. He thought too many doctors today saw themselves as engineers. Dealt with their patients through machines and computers and manipulative forcefields. But touch was important. Feeling. Understanding. McCoy liked M'Benga. Even if she was crazy.
Now he struggled with the only answer he could give her question. He couldn't save Teilani. The proof of that diagnosis was twisted across her face -- a virogen scar that marred her beauty, though truth be told, Jim never seemed to notice it.
In any other person, any other being, McCoy knew, that scar could be healed, made to disappear without a trace. But because of who Teilani was and the uniqueness of her genetically engineered heritage, that scar was beyond the power of current medicine to remove. That same fierce genetic resistance made her resistant to the medical stasis field, as well.
Immediate treatment had only slowed the deadly action of the toxin that had poisoned her. Even total stasis could not arrest its spread.
"Doctor?" M'Benga said. Her hand remained on the stasis tube. Through the faceted port, Teilani's image was repeated as if reflected through a broken prism. "Can the child be saved?"
McCoy licked his dry lips. They tasted like some foul combination of cinnamon, lemon, and burnt meat. It came from the scent of Klingon antiseptic, he knew. The Klingons were just as advanced as Starfleet when it came to medical isolation and sterilization fields, but their old battlefield traditions died hard. Klingon physicians, their staff, and their equipment were ritually and regularly bathed in the cloying fermented liquid that killed virtually all bacteria on contact. Just a suggestion of that scent was enough to bring back vivid memories of all of McCoy's earlier visits to this world. He hadn't enjoyed any of them.
"Maybe," he said in answer to M'Benga's question. It was the best he could do. "But we'll have to drop the stasis field and..." He couldn't finish. He didn't have to. M'Benga understood. She lifted her hand from the tube.
Within minutes of the field shutting down, Teilani would die.
"What would he want?" M'Benga asked simply.
McCoy knew precisely whom she meant. Knew what Kirk would want.
Kirk would want to return from his dangerous mission into the mirror universe with the antitoxin that would save Teilani and his child.
He would want to beam in unexpectedly at the very last second and --
"Admiral McCoy!" a Klingon voice barked. "There is an emergency Starfleet communication for you!"
McCoy turned to see Dr. Kron striding toward him, holding a small communicator
