USS Enterprise 1701-A
United Federation of Planets Starship,
Constitution-Class
Naval Construction Contract 1701-A
Captain James T. Kirk, Commanding
"You'll retire with extraordinary honors and the boundless gratitude of an unfolding Federation. We have a real chance for prosperity in the galaxy... a large portion of that chance is due to your vitality of will, your fundamentality of purpose, and your belief in us, Captain Kirk."
"Thank you, Mr. President. I don't know what to say."
On the starship's forward viewscreen, the president of the Federation took an uncustomary pause. His white eyes never flickered within his whey complexion and the frame of long, chalk-white hair, but today hope did luminate in them.
"I could suggest something," he said, "if you were willing."
An "aw-shucks" grin creased James Kirk's face, and he fingered the armrests of his command chair for one of the last times.
"Thank you again, sir," he said. "We've had our time in the light. It's time for others now."
The president offered his idea of a nod, barely a movement at all. His Deltan albinism made almost any expression something only the perceptive would notice.
"We shall speak again," he said, "and privately raise a glass to your career, sir, and to your officers. Starfleet Command has authorized Starbase One's interior occulting light to flash in alternate white and gold, as salute to the Enterprise. I shall consider it my privilege to sign your Bell Book personally in note of arrival, as this will be her last time coming in."
"When we return to Starbase One," Captain Kirk pointed out.
"At your discretion. No authority will supersede your own as to the final cruise of the Enterprise. Enjoy it."
The president nodded his elegant shaggy head, those alien eyes seeming not to really see.
The screen suddenly went black. Only the audio system operated for a last few seconds, in the voice of an official communications person.
"United Federation of Planets, Office of the President, Starbase One, out."
Captain James Kirk wagged a finger toward the bridge communications station, noted the acknowledgment, and settled a little too calmly back into his command chair.
"I want to speak to Mr. Scott," he said.
No one acknowledged him. No one wanted to. Somehow protocol didn't fit just then. A moment later the communication tie-in on the command chair's armrest spoke for itself.
"Scott here, sir."
"Condition of the ship, Scotty."
"Aye, sir. We've got all damaged decks evacuated and sealed off and isolated priority repairs. Warp engines are fine. Cosmetic repairs can wait, but I'll have the ship's engineering up to full integrity within twenty hours."
The captain leaned an elbow on that armrest and lowered his voice. "Mr. Scott... you understand the ship is being decommissioned upon our return to Starbase One."
"I do, sir. But if Starfleet Command is going to retire a space-worthy Enterprise without my corpse rotting in her hull, I guarandamntee yeh they'll have pain doing it. I intend to make them go down on record as having decommissioned a service-ready starship."
Silence pooled on the bridge. There was no echo, but there might as well have been.
The captain was gazing at nothing, as though preparing to follow his vessel into that nothing. He and the chief engineer. Their ship.
"I understand," he said. "You carry on, Mr. Scott."
"Thank you, sir, I will and a half. Scott out."
The captain crossed his legs and leaned back as though to digest what he had heard, and what he had uttered back.
"Steady as she goes," he said to the helm before him.
On the quarterdeck behind him, a very thin man with eyes the color of water and hair that had gone merrily gray felt his own square features harden up. Dr. Leonard McCoy had waited all his life to become a country codger, and he was enjoying it. He could scowl openly at such exchanges. He could snarl at anybody, and not get hit in the mouth.
With an aggravated frown he stepped sideways to the science station, as he had a hundred times before in years past, and muttered again to the same person who had heard his mutters those hundred times.
"What can we say to him, Spock?" McCoy began, easily loud enough for the captain to hear.
A figure straightened inside the science station cowl. The entire bridge seemed to inhale as the alien presence turned to the ship's fore. Small, alert eyes brushed the bridge, set in the triangular features of his face that McCoy had once regarded as hard, cold, built deliberately on angles. Sober and thrifty -- that underpinned the study of being Vulcan.
How old was the Vulcan now? McCoy skimmed the medical records he kept handy in his mind and tried to equate Vulcan years with human years. Failed, as usual. They just didn't equate. Spock's straight hair, once stove-black, was now a dignified sealskin gray. His quill-straight brows were still dark, still angled up and away, but were shaggier than in his youth, though they still made the Vulcan look to McCoy as did all Vulcans -- like tall, skinny bats with clothes on.
Add them to the one feature that had made Vulcans so hard to take seriously... the elongated ears that came to points. McCoy had decided those ears were the reason Vulcans had given up emotion. They couldn't stand being teased.
Suddenly McCoy felt lucky to be standing beside this man. Despite the years of mutual antagonism, he and Spock had been through every form of effort, every kind of death, every kind of life together; each offered himself in sacrifice for the other time after time, and somehow they were both lucky enough to still be standing there.
McCoy knew he was also lucky to be standing next to the first Vulcan in Starfleet, the first of what had turned out to be many. The Vulcans had always tried to be unimpressible and self-contained, but because of this one, they had changed their minds.
Because of the young Spock, the impertinent radical who had shunned his race's Olympian seclusion, Vulcans no longer prided themselves on inaccessibility. They'd discovered that Starfleet, though founded by those silly humans and still primarily run by them, wasn't quite the lawless fluster the Vulcans had assigned humanity in the past, and that it didn't cause concussion to the art of being Vulcan. In fact, they'd found out that Starfleet emblemized law in settled space, was counted upon by dozens of defenseless worlds in a touch-and-go galaxy. The Federation was the great castle that protected them, and Starfleet was its knighthood.
Even enemies knew it. That was why there had been affluent peace for so long. Starfleet insisted upon it, had the muscle to back it up.
The Vulcans were now proud, yes, proud to be part of Starfleet, to actively defend the Federation, to participate in the strength that prosperity insisted upon, and they too bristled when that path was blocked. Those who had once turned their very straight backs on Spock in his Starfleet uniform now nudged their own sons and daughters into Starfleet Academy, eager to see them answer a bugle call they themselves had once rejected, and to see them participate in the spaceborne operations a thriving interstellar community simply had to have gone on.
Yes, things had changed.
Though he was standing right beside McCoy, Spock also didn't bother to mutter, or even to lower his voice, on the bridge. This critical deck was built for acoustic perfection, so no order went unheard, no whisper unconsidered, no buzz unanswered.
On top of that, there was the captain's damned alertness. Like a leopard at rest.
"What can we say," McCoy sighed, "to make it easy to watch all the Enterprise fade into history?"
Spock shifted his weight. "The Constitution-class starship is no longer considered state-of-the-art in patrol/exploration craft, Doctor. That accolade now goes to the Excelsior-class."
"Excelsior-class," McCoy grumbled. "Looks like a swollen-up party balloon at a Starfleet shoving-off party."
The captain glanced at them, stood up, and casually circled his command chair, running his hands along the soft back.
"All things change, gentlemen," he said. "All things grow. It's our duty to be gracious."
He hesitated, gazing at the viewscreen and the enormity of space.
"How would it look to the young," he added, "if we botched our final duty?"
Copyright (c) 1992 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.
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As James T. Kirk prepares to retire from a long and illustrious Starfleet career, events in a distant part of the Federation draw him back to a part of the galaxy he had last visited as a young man--a mysterious world called Faramond whose name takes Kirk on a journey back to his youth. At sixteen, Kirk is troubled, estranged from his father, and has a bleak future. However, a trip into space with Kirk's father George and Starfleet legend Captain Robert April changes James Kirk's life forever, when a simple voyage becomes a deadly trap. Soon Kirk and his father find themselves fighting for their lives against a vicious and powerful enemy. Before the voyage ends, father and son will face life and death together, and James T. Kirk will get a glimpse of the future and his own Best Destiny...
