Flashback - Diane Carey [34]
The chancellor's ship had been hit by a torpedo shot that looked as if it came from the Enterprise, which knocked out the artificial gravity on the Klingon ship. While crippled, the ship had been visited by two presumed humans in magnetic gravity boots, who stormed the helpless crew and assassinated Gorkon. When Kirk and his surgeon, McCoy, beamed over to help, the chancellor died under McCoy's hands.
The two officers were accused of conspiracy and assassination, bolted through a government version of "trial," and sent to the gulag of Rura Penthe.
Nobody actually survived Rura Penthe. The keepers there controlled their "criminal" population by
tossing "incorrigibles" out into the deadly frozen waste of the planetoid's surface to die under the heatless glow of three distant suns. And almost everybody became "incorrigible" eventually.
Leg irons, jackal-type watch dogs, snowblindness, dark mines and quarries, a snowy wasteland dotted with mummified corpses, despair, and ultimately a painful death. Rura Penitence.
But, typical of James Kirk, a man who had plowed the field of deep space before most others, he had anticipated trouble and had himself dotted with a long-distance locator. Ah, technology.
So his crew could find him-if they dared cross into Klingon space.
Was that the conversation Captain Sulu and Commander Uhura were actually having? Janeway knew the Excelsior headed for Klingon space-did they actually go in? Did the Enterprise go?
Unfortunately, the logs didn't provide that rather significant detail. Why not?
The door chime sounded, and her drifting mind snapped back to her own critical reality. "Come in."
Ensign Harry Kim strode in with his typical expressionless expression, as if he were not too pleased about what he had to report.
"Ensign, what have you found?" Janeway prodded, letting him know that she wasn't in a mood to beat around any bushes.
The young man started to shake his head, then managed not to. "I don't see any connection be-
tween this nebula and the one the Excelsior saw eighty years ago. This one's a class-seventeen . . . theirs was an eleven. Both contain trace amounts of sirillium, but that's about it."
"But they do look similar . . ."
"To the naked eye," Kim told her, "but not to the sensors. Technically, they're very d ifferent."
Janeway tried not to look disappointed-after all, her visual-stimulus theory was still operative-but Kim seemed to feel bad about his report.
"You know," he began, faltering, "I've been talking to the Doctor . . . and he tells me it's not unusual for a repressed memory to resurface because of a smell or a visual detail. Maybe the visual similarities between the two nebulas simply triggered Tuvok's memory of the Excelsior."
"But what about the memory of the little girl?" she said instead. "What does she have to do with Tuvok's experiences on board Sulu's ship? The Excelsior seems too far removed from that childhood incident . . ."
"Who knows what goes on in a Vulcan's mind?" Kim offered. "Maybe there is a connection, and going back to the memory of the Excelsior was just an accident, a stray thought Tuvok was having because of the similarities of the two nebulas . . ."
He let his voice trail off, probably because that particular line of logic didn't make any sense and he knew it. Janeway realized he was trying his hardest to help, but there was no way to help. Answers couldn't be deduced from facts that wouldn't present themselves.
"You may be right," she said, tossing him a bone. 'Nevertheless, I've been studying the Excelsior logs-"
"What do they say?"
"Unfortunately, they don't say anything at all."
He blinked. "Nothing?"
She stood up and stretched her