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A swi~~, bright blaze of light dazzled him, leaving its blinding yellow imprint upon his retina; he turned, blinking as the afterimage faded, to see Soran behind them with the disruptor.
Another brilliant blast: This one struck the bridge dead center—a hand’s breadth from where Kirk now stood—filling the air with the stench of scorched metal. The scaffolding groaned, then shuddered as it erupted in flames, limned by black smoke; Picard ran toward it as the other captain stumbled, then grabbed the railing as the bridge gave a deep sigh and broke in two.
Amazingly, Kirk clung fast to the edge that hung nearest Picard; beyond him, a streak of roiling energy undulated in the sky. Beneath him, a deep ravine waited ominously.
Picard moved to the edge and knelt, reaching out a hand toward the captain. Kirk was gasping, his face crimson, gleaming with sweat and smudged with soot, his legs kicking against empty air for purchase, but the determination never left his eyes. He pulled himself toward Picard and cautiously extended one hand.
Picard leaned precariously close to the abyss, reaching, straining toward Kirk’s outstretched fingertips. He had not turned his back on paradise and convinced Kirk to do so as well just to fail. Only millimeters between them now. If Kirk could slide only a few millimeters, while maintaining his one-handed grip…
Kirk slid closer; the bridge shuddered as he did, causing him to lose his precarious hold on the railing.
In that split second before he could plummet downward, Picard reached still forward and, impossibly, maintained his balance as his hand caught the other captain’s. He gave a mighty backward lurch, ignoring the
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screaming protest from offended arm and shoulder and back muscles.
He fell backward, but soon righted himself again to see Kirk pushing himself to his feet. Together they moved away from the scaffolding, toward level ground; a sudden play of light above them made them both gaze upward, at the jagged streaks piercing the bright sky.
“We’re running out of time,” Picard said, fighting a surge of despair. Yet at the instant he said it, his eye caught something to ease that despair: On the ravine’s opposite side, half of the bridge still stood, suspended in midair. And upon it lay Soran’s small, black device. “Look!” He pointed. “The control padd—it’s still on the other side.” A quick glance around them showed that there was no way through the impassable peaks to the bridge’s other side. The only way to reach it was to climb down the dangling edge he had just rescued Kirk from… and jump across.
“I’ll get it,” Kirk said, obviously having come to the same conclusion, for he was already moving back to-ward the dangling bridge. “You go for the launcher.”
“No,” Picard countered firmly. The scaffolding’s supports were clearly in danger of giving way entirely—and he had no desire to be responsible for Kirk’s dying a second time. They had already come uncomfortably close enough to that. “You’ll never make that by yourself. We have to work together.”
He moved to turn; Kirk stepped into his path, and with a warmth usually reserved for very old friends, put his hand on Picard’s shoulder and said, “We are working together. Trust me. Go.” Picard’s first instinct was to refuse, to insist on helping
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retrieve the padd—but he knew that Kirk was right: Time had grown short, and he could no longer afford the luxury of watching over Kirk to be sure the Starfleet legend came to no harm.
At the same time, he could not shake the unsettling premonition that Kirk was in mortal danger; and so he, Picard, would have preferred to go after the padd himself. But both he and Kirk knew that a twenty-third century captain was no match for twenty-fourth century technology. And so he released a barely audible sigh and surrendered to the inevitable as he said softly, “Good luck, Captain.”
Kirk grinned; the act lit up his face with a brilliance that matched the writhing sky. “Call me Jim.”
And as Kirk stepped back onto the broken bridge, he found himself remembering a part of his life he had not thought of in… eighty years, was it? It scarcely seemed that long ago, when he had wakened, sweating, from the dream of falling down the sheer rockface of E1 Capitan.
That’s right; in reality, Spock had rescued him. But in the dream he had fallen endlessly, eternally, with no Spock, no friend, no one to save him ….
And the day he had been aboard the Enterprise-B—the day he had been oddly overcome by a premonition of his own death; the day, according to Picard, that he had indeed died—he’d experienced the same sensation.
He felt it again now, the instant his foot stepped onto the metal bridge: emotional free fall, the sheerest terror and bliss. Terror, because he knew Spock would not be there to catch him; bliss, because he was once again doing what he had been born to do—make a difference. There was no time for thought, for reflection, only for pure mindless action.
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There were two hundred fifty million lives at stake— and those of a well-trained, loyal Enterprise crew. Surely the lives of those shipmates alone were worth the sacrifice of his; he had seen their captain, and if Picard was representative of twenty-fourth-century Starfleet, then these were exceptional individuals indeed. What was it Spock would have said?
It is merely logical, Jim: The good of the many outweighs the good of the one.
This half of the bridge sloped dangerously downward. He took mincing half-steps, half-walking, half-sliding as he clutched the rails with both hands, his eyes fixed on the remote device, which lay on the opposite half of the broken scaffolding, the half that still remained standing.
Control padd, he reminded himself, trying to overcome the fear with amusement. You’ve got to remember these things if you’re going to live in the twenty-fourth century. Maybe I’ll get the chance to know what Gillian felt like…
I wonder ifSpock’s still alive?
Suddenly the sole of his boot slipped against the slick metal, and he was sliding downward, flailing frantically and shouting: “Whoa! Whoa….t” A small, noisy avalanche of sand and pebbles followed, pelting his head and shoulders, stinging his eyes.
Somehow he managed to grasp the chain railing and regain his footing, but behind him came ominous groans: the sound of bolts, which supported the scaffolding, working their way free from the rock.
And for a moment he was back on the Enterprise-B, his heart pounding, his breath coming in gasps, knowing that the fear did not matter. For the first time in an eternity, he felt truly alive.
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And he could feel the bridge supports giving way. A glance behind him at the bolts in the rockface confirmed it; he did not have much time.
Beyond, on the other side of the bridge, lay Soran’s device.
Kirk drew a breath and leaped toward the other side, thinking of anything except the gaping ravine that lay beneath him; thinking of Spock, of McCoy, of Carol and David, of Picard and those last moments aboard the Enterprise-B.
Astoundingly, he did not fall, but caught the very edge of the jagged metal and hoisted himself up. The bridge trembled beneath him, sagging lower, lower—but it held just enough for him to crawl toward the small black device clattering against the metal.
A shriek as metal chains and bolts snapped and gave way. The bridge lurched ominously downward. Kirk reacted with pure instinct, reaching with one hand to swipe the remote the instant before it clattered off the side and clown into the abyss. With the other, he grabbed the bridge itself and held on through adrenaline’s grace.
There was no time for thought, for reason, for anything other than pure inspiration. Mindlessly, he glanced down at the control in his hand and with brilliance born of necessity, found the proper control and pressed it.
Below him, safe upon the plateau, Picard rushed up onto the now-visible platform that revealed the clark probe and its launcher.
“Aha!” Kirk breathed, exultant, and grinned gently. This was what he had sought in every experience in the nexus; this was what had convinced him to leave it, and
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brought him here to this place and this moment, to the aid of strangers.
The bridge shuddered again, this time swinging downward, slamming him against the rockface before the failing metal gave one final agonized scream.
He held fast as he closed his eyes and told himself, The good of the many…
And when the last bolt freed itself and the last support gave way, sending him hurtling into the abyss with a thundering cascade of rocks and sand, he felt no fear, no regret, only a glimmer of gladness that a planet and starship crew were safe, and would continue without him.
And then there was silence, and the beginning of the ultimate, infinite freefall…
Only heartbeats before, Picard had dashed up onto the launcher platform and gone to work; he had not dared to look back at Kirk’s precarious situation. He could only feel a surge of deep gratitude and pray that, somehow, the bridge would hold and the captain would find a way to cling to it… and that he, Picard, could avoid Soran and his disruptor long enough to reprogram the launcher.
He had heard the distant sound of tumbling rocks and screeching metal; still, he could not permit himself to look up from his task. The control panel was labeled in utterly alien hieroglyphics—E1 Aurian perhapsmand a half-dozen screens displayed meaningless visuals and graphics. He had no choice but to start randomly pressing controls.
The main screen flickered, changed to an image of the Veridian sun, caught in the center of a crosshair. He kept
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touching controls; the image changed again, again, to distant stars, to the roiling sky—and at last to the image of the rocket itself, encased in its launcher. This was the key.
With a thrill of exhilaration, Picard drew in a breath and began testing other controls. “Picard!”
Soran’s shrill voice echoed off the surrounding cliffs. At the sound of it, Picard forced himself not to look up for a half-second, forced himself to keep his eyes on the screen and find the command he sought. He could not read the script, but he understood the visual graphic well enough: It showed two large forcefield locks encircling the rocket.
He selected the command in a half-second, no more, then glanced up to see Soran striding swiftly toward him over the rock-strewn clay, arm extended, disruptor aimed at Picard’s heart. “Get away from that launcher! Now!”
Picard lifted his hands and backed carefully away, then turned and leaped from the platform as Soran approached.
He took cover behind a rock and watched as the scientist climbed up to scowl at the launcher control panel.
Soran hunched over the launcher panel as, overhead, bolts of prismatic lightning streaked through the blue Veridian sky.
Not long. It would not be long nowmonly seconds away from Leandra and the children, so long as Picard had not, in his moralistic idiocy, altered the rocket’s course.
With the trembling fingers of one hand, he pressed the control and stared uncomprehendingly at the message that appeared on the screen: Locking clamps engaged.
In disbelief, he gazed up at the sky, at the promise of paradise, lost. The ribbon was here now, and the time for the probe to be launched was now, not two seconds from now, or five, the time it would take him to correct Picard’s intrusion. Leandra …
He would join her, yes—but not in the manner he’d hoped.
He thought of the watch she had given him, ticking relentlessly against his heart. Out of time, my darling. You and I are out of time… Zero hour. The rocket strained to launch against its restraints. Soran knew full well what was coming, yet refused to yield to instinct, to fling himself from the platform. Instead, he held fast to the panel, embracing the explosion when it came to take him out of time… Leandra … Heat. Pain. Blazing white. And then the darkness…
Overwhelmed by grief and remorse, triumph and exhilaration, Picard knelt beside Kirk’s body. The bridge had plummeted into the ravine, and the captain had been buried beneath the resulting avalanche of metal and stone; now he lay motionless beneath a large rock, his face pale, his lips stained with blood. Picard hastened to move away stones and fragments of twisted metal; although it was too late to help, the least he could do was give Kirk a burial befitting a hero. The legendary captain was finally, truly dead. The fact