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It was then and there that he made the decision. There was no need to agonize over it, no need to weigh his options. He was returning to Starfleet.

1

Eleven Years Later

“Scotty!” Kirk called desperately into the ship’s intercom. “I need warp speed in three minutes or we’re all dead!”

At the science station, Captain Thelin felt the palpitations of his antennae as the adrenaline rushed through the veins beneath his pale blue skin. The Enterprise was in danger, and he was, after all, its captain, even though Admiral James T. Kirk was currently in commanda fact that the Andorian didn’t begrudge him, for the admiral’s experience had most assuredly saved their lives several times already this day.

But as Thelin looked down at the spherical waveform on his console, growing in intensity with each passing second toward a violent detonation that would surely ensnare them, it appeared that Kirk might have finally exhausted his seemingly endless supply of clever schemes.

“No response, Admiral,” Uhura announced from the communications station.

“Scotty!” Kirk fruitlessly continued to shout into the intercom, even as the silence clearly suggested that Commander Scott in engineering was either too busy or, heaven forbid, too badly injured to reply. Kirk turned toward the helm. “Mister Sulu, get us out of here, best possible speed!”

“Aye, sir,” Sulu replied. But Thelin knew that impulse drive would not provide them with the necessary speed to escape the blast range of the Genesis Device.

Next to Thelin at the adjacent science station stood Dr. David Marcus, the brilliant son of Carol Marcus and James Kirk-the man who, despite his youth, was credited with the invention of the Genesis Device. He stared at the readouts on the consoles, quietly wringing his hands, no doubt grappling with the knowledge that his own creation was to be their undoing.

With grim irony, Thelin recalled the scene as the young boy first discovered the wave in the lab on Andor eleven years earlier. He had always wondered why, following his departure from the Institute to return to Starfleet, the whole project had eventually been classified, with the Federation’s tightest security protocols managing the flow of information in and out of the Marcus laboratory on space station Regula One. Little did he realize then that the Genesis team had discovered a power so revolutionary that it could transform the surface of an entire planet.

A power that, in the wrong hands, could be an unbelievably potent weapon.

Thelin watched the image of the U.S.S. Reliant, crippled in space, fading into the distance ever so slowly. Too slow, he knew, to save them. Aboard that ship was a madman, Khan Noonien Singh, who had stolen the Genesis Device and now had begun a buildup toward detonation. And the Enterprise, itself crippled and without warp drive as a means of escape, was counting down the minutes to its doom.

“Admiral,” Uhura called out. “I have Doctor McCoy, down in engineering.”

Standing next to the captain’s chair, Kirk stabbed the intercom switch on the armrest. “Bones! What the hell is going on down there?”

“Jim,” the doctor’s voice was heard amid a cacophony of activity in the engine room. “Scotty’s suffering acute radiation sickness. I’ve given him shots of hyronalin and cordrazine, but he won’t be conscious for a few minutes.”

“We don’t have a few minutes!” Kirk shouted.

Finding himself unable to remain seated any longer, Thelin stood and began walking toward the sound of McCoy’s voice in the center of the bridge. “Doctor,” he said. “Who is currently in charge of the engineering team? I must inform them what is at stake.”

“Thelin, where’s the sense in that?” the doctor responded with irritation. “Use that thick white-haired head of yours. You trained these kids. They know what’s at stake. Now let them do their damn jobs!”

Thelin bit his lip almost hard enough to draw blood and turned back toward the science station. The doctor was right, of course, as he usually was when invoking logic to counteract Thelin’s impulsiveness. Truth be told,