The Autobiography of James T. Kirk E-Book

David A. Goodman

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 489

Beschreibung

The Autobiography of James T. Kirk chronicles the greatest Starfleet captain's life (2233-2371), in his own words. From his youth spent on Tarsus IV, his time in the Starfleet Academy, his meteoric raise through the ranks of Starfleet, and his illustrious career at the helm of the Enterprise, this in-world memoir uncovers Captain Kirk in a way Star Trek fans have never seen.

Leseprobe

The Autobiography of James T. KirkPrint Edition ISBN: 9781783297467E-Book Edition ISBN: 9781783297474

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: September 201510 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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The Autobiography of James T. Kirk is produced by becker&mayer! Book Producers, Bellevue, Washington.www.beckermayer.com

Jacket design: Julia LloydIllustrations: Russell WalksEditor: Dana YoulinInterior design: Rosanna Brockley

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

FOREWORD BY LEONARD H. MCCOY, M.D.

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

PICTURE SECTION

AFTERWORD BY SPOCK OF VULCAN

ABOUT THE EDITOR

EDITOR GOODMAN’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Mom

FOREWORD

BY LEONARD H. MCCOY, M.D.

FIRST LET ME JUST SAY, I’M A DOCTOR NOT A WRITER. But, having read this memoir, I’ve decided I do have something to add. For the most part, Jim Kirk said everything that needed to be said about himself. But he left out one important detail, for the obvious reason that he was too modest to think it, let alone say it, so I will:

He was the greatest hero who ever lived.

Now, before you assume I’m exaggerating, and before I tell you to go to hell, let’s look at his life objectively. Who else in the last fifty years was at the center of so many critical events? Who else in that time made more decisions that affected the course of civilization? It seems unbelievable that so much history could be centered around one person, but the record is clear. And I don’t know whether it was divine providence, luck, or the mythical Great Bird of the Galaxy that determined the man who would be in the center seat of the Starship Enterprise, I’m just thankful it was Jim Kirk.

Though he skips this description of himself, his memoir leaves out little else, and for that reason it is revelatory. The personal secrets in here paint an honest portrait of the man. In some ways, he was just like the rest of us: lonely, ambitious, a son, a father, a lover, never truly content. Where he set himself apart is in the way he took responsibility for his mistakes, embraced his weaknesses, and always strove to do better, to be better. It is in this way that he is a true hero; despite his successes, he knew there was always more work to be done, and he never shied away from the call of duty. His passing is a catastrophic loss; he looked after all of us.

For me, the loss is personal: I had no better friend, and I raise my glass to him one last time.

To James T. Kirk, captain of the Enterprise.

PROLOGUE

HIDING IN THE BASEMENT ON THE RUN FROM THE POLICE, it was difficult to see how I was going to save the Galaxy. But I had to work with what was at hand. Our hideout was neither well equipped nor comfortable. The brick room was cold and dark, smelled of ash and rodent urine, and its only source of heat against the bitter winter outside was a small coal-burning stove. All it provided in the way of equipment were thick cobwebs and a pile of damaged furniture. There were a few wooden storage boxes, stained presumably from exposed pipes that crisscrossed the low ceiling. Of course, the lack of the amenities was moot. This “headquarters” was only temporary, as it was doubtful the occupants of the building above would ignore us forever, especially if alerted by the local authorities.

And that was a concern, because though we’d been in the city, and the century, for less than ten minutes, I’d already managed to break the law. When we arrived through the time portal, I realized our uniforms made us stand out, so I stole some indigenous clothes hanging out to dry on the fire escape of a tenement building. Unfortunately, a policeman had observed my theft, so my companion had to momentarily disable him, allowing our escape. At the time, the crime didn’t seem serious, but now I was having second thoughts; I had stolen the clothes from people living in poverty, who certainly couldn’t afford to replace two sets of shirts and pants. This was further confirmed as I put the flannel shirt and cotton slacks on; though it presumably had been washed, the shirt still carried the strong odor of its owner’s sweat. This smell was mixed with traces of diesel oil, tobacco smoke, and alcohol. The cloths’ “bouquet” told a story: a primitive life of hard work, its stresses dulled by the use of cheap anesthetics. I found myself wishing for some.

“It’s time we faced the unpleasant facts,” I said. And they seemed endless. We didn’t know where we were, only somewhere in the United States, and that we had arrived in the past before McCoy. That was crucial. We knew he would change the past, and thereby wipe out our future, but we didn’t know exactly how. And we didn’t know exactly when or where he would arrive.

“There is a theory,” Spock said, when I voiced these concerns. “There could be some logic to the belief that time is fluid, like a river. With currents, eddies, backwash …”

So McCoy was going to surf a time current and wash up on our doorstep? If Spock hadn’t been a Vulcan who had devoted his life to the pursuit of logic, I would’ve said it was wishful thinking. I had no choice, however, but to invest in this belief, because if McCoy were to show up somewhere else, how would we know? And even if by some miracle we found out, how would we get there? And even if we could get there, modes of travel were so primitive that we’d never reach another city in time to stop him. We didn’t even know what he was going to do, so if any time passed before we found McCoy, he might have already changed the future. No, I was going to stick with Spock’s river analogy. The alternative was too overwhelmingly bleak, and the fact that my unfailingly logical science officer believed it possible at least gave me hope.

“Frustrating,” Spock said, referring to his tricorder. “Locked in here is the exact place and moment of his arrival. Even the images of what he did. If only I could tie this tricorder in with the ship’s computer for just a few moments …”

“Couldn’t you build some form of computer aid here?” I said.

“In this zinc-plated, vacuum-tubed culture?” Sometimes Spock spoke to me as though I was an idiot, and I knew most captains wouldn’t put up with that from their first officers. But I accepted it as part of the package. And I had my own ways of torturing him.

“Well, it would prove to be an extremely complex problem in logic,” I said, then turned to warm my hands in front of the stove. “Excuse me, I sometimes expect too much of you.” The truth was, I did expect too much of him. Spock was right—the idea that he could construct a processing aid with technology 300 years out of date was ridiculous. Yet I fully expected that he’d be able to do it. And that expectation would motivate him to try. So I would leave that to him while I saw to our survival. Which seemed almost as impossible as building a computer from scratch.

We were stuck in an ancient capitalist-driven society where the only way to see to one’s needs was by having money. We had none, and if we were going to survive, we were going to have to figure out how to earn some during a period where finding work was next to impossible. The more I thought about the situation, the more depressing it became. A lot of ancient religions relied on the concept of prayer, and in that moment I recognized the compelling power of superstition, to be able to silently ask for aid and comfort from a higher power. We would need help, and there was no one to ask, and I didn’t believe in angels …

“Who’s there?” A woman stood at the top of the stairs. I moved to intercept her to give Spock a moment to cover his ears with the wool hat I’d stolen for him. She stood in the light a few steps above me. She was in her thirties, wearing a plain blouse, skirt, and apron. Simple clothing, all somehow made elegant by its wearer.

“Excuse us, miss,” I said, “we didn’t mean to trespass. It’s cold outside.”

“A lie is a very poor way to say hello,” she said. “It isn’t that cold.” Her light blue eyes carried a disdainful expression that immediately held sway over me. I knew at that moment either my lies were going to have to be a lot better, or that I was going to have to tell her the truth, as much of the truth as I could.

And I wanted to. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to hide anything from her. And I would shortly learn that Spock’s river analogy was true, and she was where it led. Because of her, I would literally save history. And I would also regret it for the rest of my life.

CHAPTER 1

WHEN MY MOTHER LEFT EARTH for a job on another planet, she said she’d be back often, and since I was nine, I took her at her word. The idea that a grown-up would not tell me the truth was beyond my experience.

I was with her and my dad on the front porch of our farm. The sun was setting and a few fireflies were out. You could see for miles; in the distance dark clouds let loose a bolt of lightning. My brother, Sam, was inside, lost in a book on his reader. Sam was twelve; he was always reading lately.

“I’m leaving in the morning,” she said.

“Why do you have to go?”

My mother crouched down and met me eye-to-eye. She told me how important it was for her to go, and that it didn’t mean she didn’t love me. She had gotten a job as part of a colony on a planet called Tarsus IV. She said ships went back and forth all the time. I looked up at my dad, who was looking away. He watched the storm in the distance.

“When will you be back?”

“It’ll be a few months,” she said. “I’ll definitely be back in time for your birthday.”

“You don’t know that,” Dad snapped angrily. It was the first time he’d spoken since we had walked outside. I looked at him again, but he was still watching the storm.

“I’ll be here,” she said, still looking at me, determined to make it feel true. She then hugged me and lifted me up in her arms, making a big show of my weight. “God, you’re so big. C’mon, let’s get some dessert.”

She looked over at Dad, then looked down. I desperately wanted him to make eye contact with her, and I could feel that Mom did too. But he wouldn’t.

The next morning she was gone, taking my idea of home with her.

Up to then I’d had a wonderful boyhood, filled with dogs, campfires, birthdays, horseback riding, snowball fights, and plenty of friends. Just like the Earth of today, there was no poverty or war or deprivation. My parents would talk about the problems in the Galaxy, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Sometimes I’d look up in the sky and my brother would point out to me the satellites or a shuttle taking off, but that’s as close as my mind got to outer space. Close to home felt perfect.

We lived on a farm near Riverside, Iowa, on a piece of property that had about 200 hectares of crops. We grew soybeans and corn, had chickens for eggs and cattle for milk and cheese. As far back as I can remember we were up at 4 a.m. every day to feed the chickens and milk the cows. Most of the caring of the crops was handled by automated machinery, but my father still insisted we get out in the fields for planting and harvesting. Though we were in no way dependent on the farm for our livelihood, my father still thought it important to understand the work involved in living off our land.

The house was four bedrooms, two floors, brick and wood. It was built using authentic materials and was a perfect copy of the house that had stood on the property for over 100 years in the 19th and 20th centuries. The property had belonged to seven generations of Kirks; it was family legend that my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Franklin Kirk, purchased the farm in 1843 from Isaac Cody, who was the father of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody.* My ancestors in the modern era let caretakers manage it, until my grandparents moved back there when they retired. My father, George Kirk, also always had a strong desire to live there.

He had grown up as one of the original “Starfleet brats”; his father, Tiberius Kirk, was already in his twenties when Starfleet Academy was founded, and though he applied, he wasn’t accepted. Still wanting to get out into space, Tiberius signed on in ordnance and supply, eventually serving on several of the then-new starbases. He met and married my paternal grandmother, Brunhilde Ann Milano, a nurse, on Starbase 8. My father was born there on December 13, 2206.

In those days, a child’s life on a starbase was pretty spartan; there weren’t a lot of families living on them, and the facilities were very limited. It was truly life on the frontier, and my father dreamed of getting back to see Earth, a dream that wouldn’t be fulfilled until he arrived for his first day at Starfleet Academy. It was my grandfather’s hope that his son would go to the academy, and admission had gotten even more competitive. But after rescuing five men after an explosion on the loading dock of Starbase 8, Tiberius was awarded the Starfleet Medal of Honor. And though my grandfather was still an enlisted man, the children of Medal of Honor winners are always given high priority during the admissions process.

My father graduated fifth in his class from the academy and, after serving a year as an instructor, was assigned to the U.S.S. Los Angeles (where he served with future captain Robert April). He was quickly promoted and eventually took the post of first officer aboard the U.S.S. Kelvin, when the previous first officer, Richard Robau, was promoted to captain. Over the course of six years he had moved up the ranks at record speed. If his career had continued, he might have been one of the youngest captains in the history of Starfleet, but his personal life led him in a different direction.

My mother, born Winona Davis, was also from a spacegoing family; her father, James Ogaleesha Davis (his middle name, as befit his heritage, was Native American Sioux, although I never did find out what it meant*), was in the first graduating class of Starfleet Academy; his wife, Wendy Felson, was in the third. My maternal grandfather was an engineer, my maternal grandmother a physician, and their daughter, my mother, attended the academy and decided she wanted to be an astrobiologist. She was four years younger than my father, and had him as an instructor in her Introduction to Federation History class.

“There were strict rules about students ‘fraternizing’ with instructors,” she told me, “and once I met your father, I wanted to break all of them.”

It is hard to know how many of the rules they actually broke, as a son usually doesn’t delve into those topics with his parents. However, when my father received his posting to the Los Angeles, the ship was still three months away from returning to Earth, so he asked for a short leave from his duties as an instructor, and immediately proposed to my mother.

“Most people assumed we’d made a terrible mistake,” my mom said, “but it was impossible for us to see a possible downside then. We were crazy in love.” And then, suddenly, the Los Angeles arrived, and my dad was off.

My mom was still in the academy and said she secretly hoped that they’d be posted together. It was over a year before she saw him next, and then almost two years after that, she graduated. She was not, however, posted to the same ship as Dad. Shortly after my mother was posted to the U.S.S. Patton, she discovered she was pregnant.

“Your father was aboard the Los Angeles then,” she told me, “and by the time the subspace message reached him I was already in my second trimester.”

Mom’s Starfleet career came to an abrupt halt; she took a leave of absence, moving in with my dad’s parents on Earth (her parents had passed away several years earlier) on the family farm. My brother, George Samuel, named for my father, was born on August 17, 2230.

The maximum amount of time my mother could stay away from Starfleet without resigning her commission was two years. For that period, she and my father were apart. She stayed on the farm and raised George with her in-laws, while she also continued her studies and completed a doctorate in astrobiology.

“It was a good time to be with George Jr.,” she said, “but I missed George Sr. This was not what I expected my life to be. My own mother had resigned her commission when she had me. She had raised my brother and me by herself since Dad was off in space. I was determined not to be a single parent, yet here I found myself doing just that.”

She told me she felt conflicted about leaving her two-year-old son. “Your grandparents were energetic and attentive, which made the decision a little easier, but I couldn’t get past the idea that I was abandoning my baby.”

Dad also missed Mom, and when the two years were up, he pulled whatever strings he could to get her posted to the Kelvin, where he was now the first officer. Unfortunately, soon after she arrived, she discovered she was pregnant again, this time with me.

My dad said Captain Robau was furious; even if regulations had allowed children aboard a ship, he wasn’t a commander who would’ve wanted it. However, that wasn’t really the impetus for Dad’s impending decision. Shortly after determining that my mother was pregnant, Dad received word that his father, Tiberius, had passed away.

“It was a strange ‘circle of life’ kind of moment,” my dad told me. “Though I’d grown up in space, my father had been with me the whole time. Now that he was gone, I realized I barely knew my first son, and I had a second child on the way. I wasn’t going to let your mom go home and raise our children by herself.” So he resigned his commission.

Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about the decision Dad made and how it affected me. I have told many people that my father leaving Starfleet inspired my own career, to complete the career he didn’t get to finish. Though that is partially true, the rest of the story is a lot more complicated.

I was born on March 22, 2233, to a complete family: I grew up in a house with two parents, an older brother, and a grandmother. It was my own slice of heaven. I was protected, lived in a clean, safe world. But it was a façade; I just wasn’t sophisticated enough to see through it.

As I look back now, I can see that my parents were not happy. They didn’t fight, they didn’t even disagree openly, but the moments of warmth between them were rare. Mom worked hard around the house, but the work itself wasn’t what she wanted to do. I have a lot of memories of those times finding my mother off in a corner reading. My father was attentive to her, but not overly affectionate. He had strong ideas of what he wanted life on the farm to be like, and he got a lot of confirmation for this from his mother, Brunhilde, who still lived with us. Grandma Hilde had lived her whole life on the frontier of other worlds, and my memory of her was as a hardscrabble, somewhat unforgiving individual. My mother never saw herself as living on a farm, so she didn’t argue with how they wanted to do things, but the situation took its toll. Eventually, she decided to pursue her career again.

“It wasn’t what I wanted,” my father told me much later, “but I wanted her to be happy.”

“Sam, can I come in?” I said. (I was the only one who called my brother by his middle name. I don’t know how it started, but I kept calling him Sam well into adulthood.) I was standing outside of Sam’s bedroom. He was lying on his stomach reading. It had been only a few weeks after my mother departed. It had been very quiet around the house. My father had kept up our routines of school, chores, homework. My grandmother was looking after our meals and clothing, and we were all pretending like nothing had changed.

“Yeah, you can come in,” he said, without looking up. This was unusual for him to grant me permission to come into his room. It was also unusual for me to ask; normally I would just barrel in and wait for him to throw me out.

I took only a half step into the room and looked around. Sam had lots of trophies, some athletic, many academic. He always impressed me. In fact, from the minute I was aware, probably around two years old, all I wanted was my brother’s approval and attention, and it seemed to me he took great pleasure in withholding both. Most of his energy directed at me went into putting up an emotional blockade to my devotion, though sometimes, if his friends weren’t available, I was a stand-in playmate, or, more accurately, a fawning sidekick.

At five, I remember watching in fascination as he mixed homemade gunpowder and used it to make a cannon out of old tin cans with the bottoms cut out and soldered together. I shared the blame when his invention blew a hole in the side of the barn. Though we were given double chores for a week, I felt happy that somehow I’d been given credit for his rambunctious ingenuity. He, of course, was irritated by my delight at us being mistaken as a team.

He always seemed calm and logical, which led me to try to tease a reaction out of him with my big emotions. My dad would often have to intervene, but he seemed a little amused by my desire to get a rise out of Sam.

And as far as I could tell, both he and my father weren’t the least bit affected by Mom’s leaving. This didn’t help me make sense of the confusion I felt. Dad was especially unapproachable; I felt an almost psychic fence around him. Sam, despite his “disdain” for me as the little brother, was somehow a little more accessible. Or maybe just a little less scary.

“What do you want?” he asked without looking up from his reader.

“Sam … do you know why Mom left?”

“It’s because she got a job,” Sam said.

“She didn’t have a job before.”

“She did, but she quit it to have kids,” he said.

“Oh.”

“She had work she always wanted to do,” he said.

Sam stopped reading and looked at me. It seemed like he looked at me for a very long time. Then he spoke.

“Do you miss her?”

I don’t remember if I answered; I just started crying.

Sam got off his bed and came over to me. He then awkwardly hugged me. I don’t know if we’d ever hugged before that, and it didn’t come naturally to him, but it was enough comfort for me. At that moment, my brother seemed like an adult, though he was only 12 years old and probably was feeling as lost as I was. I don’t remember how long I cried, but eventually I stopped.

“You should probably go wash your face,” he said. I left his room, but from that point on, Sam was no longer as cool to me, and eventually we became quite close.

The weeks turned into months, and then years. Mom made a sincere, dogged effort to stay in touch with us over subspace, but there was no real-time communication over that distance, so we would record messages that she would watch, and then she would record responses that we’d watch. She kept her promise to be home for my next birthday, but it was the last birthday she’d celebrate with me for several years. Over time, the jealousy I had toward my friends whose families were still whole drove me into isolation. I spent my free time after school wandering our property, trying to get lost. I was starting to feel like I wanted to get away.

My dad still did his best to create the life he wanted us to have. We spent a lot of time together and took a lot of trips. He especially enjoyed camping, and during these excursions he would share with us his knowledge of the American frontier, which our ancestors helped settle. His interest became mine, one I pursue to this day.

We took advantage of the many national parks around the country, including Yosemite and Yellowstone. He had taught me horseback riding on our farm, and on these trips he’d let me go off on my own, as long as I was back in camp by sunset. I enjoyed the independence and the sense of adventure, though there was rarely any real danger.

However, during one of these solitary horseback rides, my horse was spooked by the sound of a loud boom. Once I’d gotten the animal under control, I looked up to find the source of the noise, and saw something high in the sky, falling fast. As it got closer, it looked like it was on fire. At first it was very distant, and then suddenly it wasn’t; it was growing in size and seemed like it was headed directly toward me.

I grabbed the reins tight, tapped my heels against my horse, taking off at a fast gallop. I kept looking back over my shoulder, and my error became clear. I had misjudged the angle of the approaching object, and if I had just stayed still it would have flown over me. But by riding off, I was actually putting myself more directly in its path. My panic only led me to continue to try to outrun it.

I finally looked back and saw the large metal object now only a few hundred meters behind me, flames dancing off it. It looked like it was going to hit me, and in terror I leaped off my moving horse. I hit the ground and rolled, and as I looked up, I saw the flaming belly of the craft as it flew over me, then heard it crash. There was a blast of intense heat. I smelled smoke and could hear the crackling of fire. I stood up and saw the crash, only about 30 meters from me.

There was a gash in the forest; trees on either side of the wreck were broken away and charred black. The wreck was smoking and clearly not from this planet. It was small, a two-person shuttle of some kind. My horse was gone; I was momentarily scared that it had been hit, then saw its hoof-prints heading off from the wreck. The animal had had the good sense of how to get out of danger. But now I was stranded. I wasn’t even sure how far away I was from our campsite, and it was getting dark.

“You! Get in here, now!”

The voice came from inside the ship. It was a scary, guttural, accented English. I started to back away.

“Stop, or you will regret it! Now get in here!”

I froze.

“Now!”

I slowly approached the craft. The front of the ship was firmly lodged in the ground, its back end pointed up toward the sky. There was an immense amount of steam emanating from the hull as the heat from its rapid reentry dissipated. There was an open hatch, but it was too dark inside to make anything out. I looked around for any sign of an adult. Spaceships couldn’t just land on Earth without being noticed; somebody had to know about this. But I didn’t see anyone. I knew, or hoped, help would be there soon.

“I said get in here!”

I climbed up inside the hatch. My eyes adjusted to the dim cabin light. The whole ship was on a severe tilt, and I held on to the hatch frame in order to maintain my footing. The cabin was small, jammed with control panels and storage lockers. There were two chairs in the front, and I could make out in the dim light two figures, both large, dark. One sat unmoving in the pilot’s chair, the other in the passenger seat, wedged under a fallen piece of the ship’s inner superstructure. He was the one who shouted orders at me. He was humanoid, but not a human. His features, dark eyes, prominent nose, and forehead were truly frightening. At first.

“You’re a child!” He said it as if I’d committed a crime.

“I’m eleven,” I said.

Trying to keep my balance in the tilted room, I moved carefully toward him. As I got closer, I became more fully aware that he wasn’t tall, but just wide. And his face … once I got a look at it, I wasn’t scared anymore. He looked to me like a giant pig.

“What are you waiting for? Get me out of here! Can’t you see I’m injured?!”

This was the first time I’d met a Tellarite, and to this day I’m still impressed by the ease with which they can slide into argument. I’ve since learned that disagreeing is actually a societal and academic tradition in their culture, a challenging of the status quo that they see as crucial to their growth and prosperity as a society. At the time, however, I accepted his disdain as an accurate judgment of my abilities.

The metal girder pinning him down had cut into his leg. There was a thick, brown liquid on his pants, which I realized was his blood. I stepped in to try to lift the girder, but it was ridiculous to try; even a grown man wouldn’t have been able to lift it.

“It’s too heavy,” I said. “I should go get help—”

“Ridiculous! You leave me and I will die!”

It was the first time I’d seen an adult of any kind more scared than I was. I turned and was startled at the other figure in the pilot’s chair. There was a piece of shrapnel lodged in his forehead. His eyes and mouth were open as if in a silent scream. This was also the first time I had seen a dead body. I was shaking as the complainer grabbed me.

“What are you waiting for?!”

“Your leg doesn’t look that bad. Are you sure I shouldn’t just get—”

“Idiot! Do the humans teach their children nothing?! My leg isn’t what’s going to kill me! The ship’s reactor is leaking radiation!”

I was old enough to know that “radiation” was bad. I suppose I should’ve run out of there to protect myself, but somehow I felt this pissed-off Tellarite was now my responsibility. I looked around the room for some kind of solution.

“Do you have a communicator or something?”

“You are an imbecile from a race of imbeciles! It’s been damaged!”

“What about …” I said. “What about an engineer’s tool kit?”

“Oh, so you think you’re going to fix my broken ship? You, the idiot human? How did I get so lucky …”

“No, I thought if you had a laser torch, I could cut the metal piece that’s holding—”

“Do I look like an engineer? Check those storage lockers,” he said. “Hurry!” He obviously quickly changed his mind about my idea. I opened the storage lockers and finally found what looked like a tool kit. Inside, the tools were unfamiliar.

“Which one’s—?”

“That one, you fool! We are going to die because you are such a fool!”

He indicated something that bore only a slight resemblance to my father’s laser torch. I picked it up. It was bulky and heavy. I didn’t know quite what do to with it, and felt a rising flood of frustration and anguish. I was going to cry. The Tellarite’s histrionics, the dead body, the dark room, and now this tool I didn’t know how to use. I wanted to leave, but I had to stay. Caught in an unresolvable conflict, I just tried to keep going.

I focused on the laser torch. It was designed for a hand with two thick fingers and a thumb. After a moment, I realized I could operate it if I used both of my hands, and quickly went back to the Tellarite. I aimed it at the girder just above his chest, when he grabbed my arm.

“What are you doing?! Trying to kill me? Is it revenge you want?”

“No,” I said. “If I cut the piece here, I will be able to move it so you can slide out.”

“Hurry up!” I guess he was on board.

I had seen my father use a torch to cut, but he used one designed for human hands. Still, I did what I could to imitate what I’d seen. I carefully aimed the torch and turned it on. A blue-white beam hit the girder. I slowly moved it up, away from the Tellarite, and I could see it was cutting through the thick metal. I took my time and sliced through the girder. I turned the torch off, carefully put it aside, then put both of my hands on the much smaller piece I’d cut and tried to move it. It initially wouldn’t budge, and I was suddenly worried that I’d missed something. I looked it over, and decided I had no choice but to try again. I pushed, and this time it gave and slid away. I chuckled involuntarily, surprised at my success. But the Tellerite wasn’t interested in congratulating me.

“Move!” He pushed me aside and slid from his chair. Screaming in pain, he fell to the tilted deck. He turned on his stomach, and I watched as he tried to scramble up to the hatch. But between his weight and his injury, and the severe angle of the deck, he was helpless. I stared at this pathetic sight, unsure of what to do, until he finally stopped struggling and turned to me, breathing heavily. He said nothing.

“Can … can I help you?” I asked.

He was silent. I took that as a yes.

It wasn’t easy getting the Tellarite out of the ship, but once I did, I got under his left arm and helped him walk as far away from the wreck as we could. We’d only gotten a few steps when a Starfleet Fire and Rescue team landed in a medical shuttle. As the medics tended to their patient, it was satisfying to watch the Tellarite treat them with the same amount of disdain he had for me.

As one of the doctors gave me an examination, another shuttle arrived, and several Starfleet officers piled out, three in red shirts, one in gold. The one in gold was in his fifties, gray haired, had a natural sense of authority. He walked over to the Tellarite, spoke to him for a moment. The Tellarite indicated me, and the gold-shirted officer turned, looked at me with surprise, then came over. I was concerned that the Tellarite had somehow gotten me in trouble.

“What’s your name, son?” he said.

“James Tiberius Kirk,” I said.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Captain George Mallory.” He shook my hand. “The Tellarite ambassador tells me you saved his life.”

“He’s … the ambassador?” I almost missed that part because I was so surprised that the Tellarite had given me credit for pulling him out of the ship.

“Yes,” Mallory said. “He was heading to San Francisco, but his pilot refused to follow our landing procedures and got into some trouble. A few more minutes exposed to the radiation in that craft and he would’ve died. You helped prevent an intergalactic incident, son. You’re a real hero.”

“Thanks,” I said. I couldn’t hold back my smile.

“You’re going to go live with your mom for a little while,” Dad said. It was June of 2245, I was 12, and Grandma Hilde had just passed away. Sam, at 15, had gained early acceptance to the University of Chicago and would be starting there in a few months. Mom had made the suggestion that I come to live with her, and though Dad resisted it, I was thrilled.

Since my encounter with the Tellarite ambassador, I had definitely become more interested with everything associated with other planets. I had started to ask my father if he thought I should join Starfleet, and was always surprised at how little enthusiasm he had for it. He would tell me how competitive gaining entrance to the academy was, even for the children of graduates, and he also constantly emphasized to me the careers available to people on Earth. I could tell that he was worried that my experience with the Tellarite had filled me with delusions of heroic grandeur; and at that point, he might have been right.

On top of the adventure of moving to a new planet, I was actually going to be traveling there by myself. Dad, however, was not ready to entrust me to the crew of a ship, so he made contact with a family that was moving to Tarsus IV, and they agreed to look after me for the two-month trip. Still, to be going somewhere without a parent at the age of 12 was exciting.

A couple of months later, I was packed and ready to go. Sam had already left for school, so it was just Dad taking me to the shuttle port in Riverside in his hover car. We drove in silence on the half-hour trip along the highway that connected our farm to the city.

The port was a small one; shuttles connected to the major cities of Earth, and one made the trip each day to Earth One, the orbital facility in space. When we arrived, Dad and I went to look for the family who I was going to be traveling with.

“George!” A big bearlike man with unkempt hair barreled toward us and warmly shook Dad’s hand.

“Rod, this is my son Jim,” Dad said. “Jim, this is Rod Leighton.” The big man looked down at me and gave me a pat on the shoulder.

“Jim! Nice to meet you! Come meet the family!”

Rod led us over to the shuttle boarding entrance, where a diminutive woman and a boy about my age were waiting.

“Hello, Barbara,” Dad said to the woman. She gave him a hug, then turned and looked at me.

“Jim, it’s going to be a pleasure having you with us,” she said. She gave me a warm smile.

“Are you kidding, we’re lucky he’s letting us come with him,” Rod said. He then turned to the boy. “Tom, introduce yourself. You guys are going to be spending a lot of time together.”

“I’m Tom,” he said. There was a little bit of sarcasm in his voice, but he put his hand out and I shook it. This less-than-auspicious beginning to my relationship with Tom Leighton was interrupted by an announcement over the public address system.

“Attention, this is the final boarding call for Orbital Flight 37 …”

“That’s us,” Rod said.

I turned to look at my dad. This was the first moment in all the months leading up to this trip that I realized I’d be leaving him.

“Don’t give the Leightons any trouble,” he said.

“I won’t.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he said. “Take care of your mom. Be safe out there.”

I thought he would give me a hug, but instead he held out his hand for me to shake. I shook it. We then all turned to board the shuttle. I turned back and saw him standing there. He smiled at me and waved me on. I was leaving him, without Mom or Sam in the house, all alone on the farm. And I was guilty, not because I wanted to stay, but because I really wanted to go. I felt I was finally getting to say goodbye to my childhood, and in truth I was, but not in the way that I thought.

We climbed aboard the shuttle, and Rod got us seats near one of the portholes. My face stayed plastered to the window as we took off. The gravity plating and inertial dampeners on the shuttle made it almost impossible to sense you were moving at all; it made the world outside look like a movie. As the shuttle banked before heading out into space, I caught sight of my dad, standing in the port alone, watching us go. I waved, but he couldn’t see me.

We cleared the atmosphere in less than five minutes and were suddenly in orbit. It was my first time in space, and it was stunning to see the big blue marble of Earth below, the sky filled with spaceships and satellites, and finally Earth One, the large orbital station that serviced and supplied the ships that came into orbit. We were flying to Tarsus on the S.S. New Rochelle, which was in a parking orbit away from the station. It was a supply ship, an old Class-J cargo tug with an updated engine. As we approached, the ship looked huge; it had a forward command section, and a long thin hull in the back that housed modular cargo holds. It looked like an ancient railroad train in space.

The shuttle docked at an airlock near the forward command section. I grabbed my duffel bag and followed the Leightons as we entered through a docking tunnel. A crewwoman holding a tablet checked us in, then directed us aft. We passed a few open hatchways to modular cargo pods, where we could see crewmen who worked busily in the cavernous holds, stacking crates and storage containers.

We reached a hatch to the rearmost cargo hold, and Rod led us inside. As we entered, we saw that it wasn’t cavernous like the others. The interior had been redesigned; walls and corridors had been inserted to create several floors of passenger quarters. We found our stateroom.

“Here it is,” Rod said. “Home sweet home.” It was small, with two bunk beds, two closets, and four drawers for storage. But it was clean and spare, and I found its small size and efficiency somehow exciting. Rod went over to one of the bunk beds.

“I’m on top,” he said, with a wink to his wife. She looked genuinely annoyed and slapped his shoulder. Rod then turned to me and Tom.

“What say you, boys? You want to go find a porthole and watch us leave orbit?” Rod didn’t even wait for a response; he was out the door and Tom and I were on his heels. We headed forward and crossed through two cargo holds and reached the entrance to the command and drive section. There was a guard posted who stopped us.

“Sorry, authorized personnel only,” he said.

“Oh, apologies, the captain’s son wanted to see us leave orbit,” Rod said, indicating me. “I figured it wouldn’t be a problem. Come on, boys, let’s—”

“Wait … whose son?” The guard looked worried. “He’s Captain Mayweather’s son?”

“Don’t worry about it, I understand you’ve got orders. Come on, boys …”

Rod led us back the way we came, but the guard stopped us.

“I can let you into the command section, but you have to stay where I put you …”

“You sure? I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“It’s okay, but as soon as we go to warp, you have to come back.”

“Sure, fine.”

The guard led us into the command section; he indicated an access ladder, and we left him behind as we climbed it. The ladder led to a forward observation deck. It was cramped, barely enough room for the three of us, but the view port filled up the whole wall. It was like we were standing in outer space, looking out on Earth and all the spaceships in orbit.

“Mr. Leighton, how did you know the captain had a son?” I said.

“I didn’t,” Rod said, smiling. “And you can call me Rod.”

I laughed. A bluff! And it was quite a big one we found out when we later met Captain Mayweather, whose dark skin indicated a pure African ancestry. He was also well over 100.

We were only on the observation deck for a few moments before we noticed Earth and the ships in orbit slipping away. As Earth moved behind us, I noticed off to the right in the distance a metal web surrounding a large space vehicle. It was a ship in dry dock. As we got closer, I could make out small repair craft buzzing about it. The superstructure of the dry dock kept me from getting a complete look at the ship, but it had the familiar saucer and two-engine nacelle design of many Starfleet vessels. Yet somehow it seemed larger and different than any ship I’d seen before.

“Dad, what ship is that?” Tom said. I was so intent on getting a better look at the ship I hadn’t noticed Tom looking as well.

“One of the new Constitution-class ships,” Rod said.

“What’s the Constitution class?” Tom said.

“They say it’s going to be faster than any ship ever built,” he said. “It’s going to be able to survive in space without maintenance and resupply the way most ships have to. They have high hopes for it.”

We passed the dry dock and then it and the ship were gone. It would be a number of years before I got a better look at it.

*EDITOR’S NOTE: Though Isaac Cody was a well-known and successful developer in the region during the 19th century, there is no record of him selling a farm to Franklin Kirk.

*EDITOR’S NOTE: The translation of the Sioux name “Ogaleesha” is “Wears a Red Shirt.”

CHAPTER 2

THE TWO-MONTH TRIP TO TARSUS IV was uneventful and eventually quite dull. Tom Leighton and I were the only two kids on the voyage, and by the time it was over we knew every detail of the ship and about each other. Tom reminded me a lot of Sam; he was smart and quiet, loved to read, and wanted to be a scientist. Once he got comfortable with me, I found him to be an engaging friend. He often pulled weird facts out of his head that were always interesting and entertaining.

One night, while everyone was asleep, he woke me up, excited.

“Come on, Jim, I found out where the artificial gravity generator is.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but I got dressed and joined him as we headed out to the catwalk that led to the rest of the ship. Like most ships in Starfleet, the New Rochelle tried to imitate Earth’s conditions of day and night, so this was the late shift and most of the crew were off duty and asleep.

Tom led me to a ladder that went down to the bottom of the main hull. When we reached the deck, he indicated a hatch.

“Right behind that is the artificial generator for the entire ship,” he said. “It took me a while to figure out where it was.”

“Congratulations,” I said. I was really tired and not a little confused.

“Come on,” he said, and immediately headed off.

“Where the hell are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

We headed back up the ladder, and then forward again. We then snuck into a cargo hold and stopped on the catwalk. We were about 100 feet off the floor of the hold, which was partially filled with storage containers.

“According to my measurements, we’re about halfway between the artificial gravity generator and the bow plate.” Tom put his hands on the railing of the catwalk.

“So?”

“Watch.” Tom pushed hard on the railing and suddenly was rising off the deck. He flipped over and landed, feetfirst on the ceiling. It looked like he was standing upside down.

“Holy crap,” I said. “What the hell is going on?”

“I read about it,” Tom said. “These cargo ships used to be run by families who learned all sorts of facts about these ships. Some of them called this ‘the sweet spot.’ Try it!”

I grasped the railing and pushed. At first I was just pushing up my own weight, and then suddenly I was weightless and moving through the air. I tumbled end over end. I actually hit Tom and we fell to the “floor,” which was actually the ceiling. It was amazing.

“Let’s do it again!”

Both of us lost in laughter, we then pushed off together and landed on the catwalk. We kept going back and forth, laughing, yelling, almost missing the catwalk a couple of times, until finally a security guard found us and dragged us back to our quarters. We spent a lot of the next two months sneaking off to this area. Eventually, I became interested in why it was happening, and I sought out a crew member who explained it to me. It was my first experience trying to understand life in outer space, and the relationship between humans and their spacecraft. It also taught me a valuable lesson on the inherent risks involved in space travel, as on one of these excursions I got careless; I missed the catwalk and landed on the cargo bay floor, breaking my wrist.

While my wrist healed, I ended up spending a lot of time with Tom’s parents. They were very loving and attentive to him, and treated me like I was a member of their family. They made sure I was taken care of, and that I kept up with my studies. Barbara, a physician, always asked me lots of questions about my interests and was on me constantly about whether I was getting enough to eat. She was small, probably just over five feet tall, but she had a quiet intensity that somehow gave her authority over the three larger males in her care. She stood in great contrast to her husband, a boisterous raconteur who thrived on attention. (Rod, much to his wife’s chagrin, taught Tom and me poker on that trip, where I learned more about his ability to bluff. No real money exchanged hands, but it was still instructive.) Rod was skilled in modern construction and was very excited about joining the colony, and though my mother had been on Tarsus IV for years, it wasn’t until this trip that I learned about its history.

Humans settled Tarsus IV in the 22nd century after the Romulan War. Most of the settlers were veterans of the conflict who, with their families, purposely picked a planet on the other side of the Galaxy from the Romulans and the Klingons. Their goal was a society devoted to peace. So, although many of them had served on ships as soldiers, they devoted themselves to a scientifically constructed technocracy. The government was built on completely practical notions of what the individuals in the society needed and what they in turn could provide. For a century the colony had flourished as one of the most successful examples of human achievement in the Galaxy. At 13 I don’t know if I fully understood the accomplishment of the people who built this world, but looking back it makes what would happen there that much more tragic.

We arrived at Tarsus IV on schedule, and the Leightons and I were among the first people to be taken down to the planet. As the pilot took the shuttle below the cloud cover, I could see huge tracts of barren, rocky land. Then in the distance there was a strip of green, and we came in on a landing field outside a small city. When we stepped off the shuttle onto my first foreign planet, I was surprised at what I saw: blue skies, rolling hills, grass, and trees. My first exposure to a Class-M planet; it wasn’t foreign at all. It could easily have been mistaken for Southern California.

The spaceport was only a few kilometers outside the main town. I could see the dense sprawl of buildings, none higher than four stories. It had the feel of a late-19th-century European city, dense but not quite modern. I was trying to take it all in, when I was startled by someone calling my name.

“Jim!” I turned. It was my mother. Because of the limits of communication while in transit, I hadn’t heard from her in the months since I left Earth. I had gotten so caught up with space travel and landing on a new world I’d actually forgotten about her.

She ran toward me, a giant smile on her face. She’d gotten older since I’d seen her last; in my mind she was still the young, vibrant woman who lifted me up in her arms when I was little. Now, because I’d grown, she seemed small to me. It was a difficult adjustment; she strode like a beautiful colossus in my imagination and now she was only slightly taller than me. She squeezed me in a warm hug. I could feel her tremble as she fought back tears. I felt the eyes of everyone around us as she embraced me, and though as a child I’d missed this affection, in this moment I could not return it. She felt my awkwardness and stepped back. We were almost on the same eye level.

“You’ve gotten so big,” she said. Whether intentionally or not, that was one of the last things she said to me before she left Earth. Now, unlike then, I heard the regret in her voice. We stood in uneasy silence for a long moment; then the Leightons stepped in and introduced themselves to her. Barbara said some things about what a nice young man I was. Mom wasn’t particularly warm to them; she seemed uncomfortable, anxious to get me away.

“Come on, Jim, let’s go home.”

I could see Rod was a little put off by her attitude, but Barbara placed a gentle hand on his forearm. Barbara said they’d see me later, she was sure, and I said goodbye and thanked them. Mom helped me with my luggage, and we headed off to a waiting hover car, a simple vehicle with four seats and an open trunk. She drove it herself into the main city.

As we glided through the streets, Mom gave me a tour. She seemed very self-conscious talking to me, and I frankly wasn’t doing anything to help put her at ease. She filled the time by explaining the colony to me.

“There are 12 boulevards that radiate out from the city center,” she said, as we entered the outer perimeter. The boulevard we were on was surrounded on both sides by buildings no more than three stories in height, and they looked to be made of brick and stone. It all seemed very old to me.

“All the buildings except the ones of the original settlement are made of indigenous materials,” she said. I sat there quietly. “You know what indigenous means?”

“Yes,” I said. I was being purposely curt. Since seeing her, I had felt an unexpected surge of anger, and it was overwhelming me.

The boulevard, simply labeled 12th Street, converged with all the boulevards in the center square. This was the site of the original settlement, and the buildings here, while in fact the oldest, looked the newest. Arranged to establish a town square, they were made from prefabricated materials designed to weather harsh environments. The square was quite large, and we drove through it and continued on to the other side of town. My mother tried to fill in as much information as she could, then asked me for details of my trip. I gave her mostly one-word answers. She was struggling to connect, and I was making sure she failed.

She pulled the hover car over near a redbrick two-story building. We got out and she led me inside to a first-floor apartment. It was simple, clean, and quaint. She had indulged in the ancient tradition of putting photographs on the wall; Sam and I were everywhere I looked, at every age. I didn’t even remember some of the pictures being taken. She showed me to my room, which had a small bed, dresser, and its own window that looked out onto the street.

“I know it’s not much,” she said.

“It’s fine,” I said.

“Let me help you unpack.”

“I can handle it.”