Flashback - Diane Carey [76]
The hall was crowded with delegates, ambassa-
dors of numerous planets, wearing different-colored sashes to identify each delegation's representatives. To the left, several Starfleet officers were herding certain people to the center. Janeway started to look in that direction, when Captain Sulu snapped, "Cartwright!"
When she turned to look, Janeway saw him aiming his phaser-at a Starfleet admiral!
"Just a minute," Sulu ordered, keeping his phaser and those of his security team in the face of the shocked admiral.
Seemed he was right. The admiral was trying to skirt out of the hall while everyone else's attention was turned inward.
Only now did Janeway recall that there had been upper-echelon Starfleet personnel involved in the conspiracy. Every race had its fingers in the mess- everyone had a stake, one way or the other, in the standing or collapsing of the peace.
At the podium, the president of the United Federation of Planets was being lifted to his feet. Janeway enjoyed a moment of awe for the thin, tall albino Deltan with long snowy hair and a Fu Manchu beard and mustache. He had come down in history as the best president since Abraham Lincoln.
Perhaps that was why she had been thinking about John Wilkes Booth.
Standing custodially beside the president was a Starfleet captain with sandy brown hair and a squarish face. Janeway only needed a moment to recognize him. "James Kirk!" she breathed. She'd seen him in log
reels and heard his voice, but this personal experience was heartwarming.
He had just saved the president's life, and the assassin now lay on the floor, blasted out of the tower by Kirk's chief engineer, Montgomery Scott, who was just now arriving on the lower level. Not far away, Dr. Leonard McCoy had a phaser up the nose of what looked like a Romulan.
And there-the legendary Mr. Spock, the first Vulcan in Starfleet, was pulling along a young Vulcan Starfleet officer, a woman. He seemed most stern, but somehow satisfied.
Stunned delegates gawked as somebody pulled a Klingon mask off the assassin.
"It's Colonel West," somebody proclaimed.
A human. The conspiracy could claim all lands.
"What is the meaning of this!" a Klingon woman demanded.
At Janeway's side, Tuvok leaned to her and said, "That is Azetbur, daughter of Gorkon and the new chancellor. The Romulan is Nanclus, ambassador and conspirator."
"It's about the future, Madam Chancellor," James Kirk said, oversounding Tuvok's murmur.
The captain's voice was distinct and familiar, more mild than Janeway would have expected, his enunciation particularly good, yet somehow very normal, subdued and approachable, without a touch of pretension.
Well, maybe a touch.
"Some people think the future means the end of
history," Captain Kirk went on. "Well, we haven't run out of history just yet. Your father called the future 'the undiscovered country.'" He faced the new chancellor and said, "People can be very frightened of change."
The young Klingon woman fought to think past her own fears as she anchored herself in the captain's eyes, the eyes of the man who had fought Klingons all his life and now was fighting to save them. Perhaps it was unthinkable to these people, back then, that one civilization should stick its neck out for another, even if they'd been enemies for as long as anyone could remember.
With some inner resistance, Azetbur accepted. "You've restored my father's faith."
With tolerant radiance, Kirk's eyes grew soft. For this moment, all the legends of the hard and unbending man of war lay down before another persona.
"And you've restored my son's," he said evenly.
The sense of joy, of strain and grief, rippled through the hall. Someone began to pat his hands together. Then someone else. In moments, the crackle of applause rose to the high ceiling.
Summoned by the applause, James Kirk moved to the riser behind the podium, and was joined gradually by Captain Spock, Captain Sulu,