Open Writing

Captain James T. Kirk felt the familiar tingle envelop his body as the transporter field dissolved his essential self into its corporate atoms and, by a process that would have been considered magic only a hundred years previously, re-assembled them in Transporter Room Three of his new command, one thousand kilometers above the surface of the earth.

From Kirk’s perspective, nothing much happened; the details of Transporter Room Five at Star Fleet HQ simply appeared to fade into a uniform gray blur that resolved itself a few seconds later into the transporter room on board the Enterprise. To the person being transported, it appeared that it was the surroundings that changed, not themselves.

The gray mist cleared, and the first thing Kirk saw was the smiling face of Chief Engineer Scott, who was operating the transporter. The portly Scotsman came forward to greet his captain as Kirk stepped down from the platform.

“Welcome aboard, Captain. I couldnae let any of these sassenachs bring ye back to the auld gel.” He indicated the two temporary crewmen who were standing at rigid attention, and who would transport back to the Star Base before the Enterprise got under way. “I thought it best that I handle it meself.”

Kirk smiled, and nodded to the engineer. “Thank you, Mr. Scott. As always, I feel completely safe in your hands. Are the others all on board?”

“Aye, Captain. Uhura was the last, and she arrived about thirty minutes ago.”

Kirk nodded again. “Very well, I’ll be on the bridge. Are we still on schedule for departure?”

“Aye, Captain. She’ll be ready when ye want her.”

Kirk left the transporter room and made his way down the familiar corridors to the nearest turbolift. Any concerns he might have had were put to rest by the knowledge that Scotty had things under control. ‘The miracle worker’, as he was known, was the only engineering officer ever to attain the rank of Captain in the history of Star Fleet; it was even rumored that, had he stayed on and not taken retirement, he might even have been bumped upstairs to Admiral. Kirk smiled to himself at the thought. Not much chance of that, he thought. Scotty would never accept such an exalted rank if it meant that he would be separated from his beloved machines.

There was not one square inch of the Enterprise that the Scotsman did not know, and Kirk wisely left him to get on with his job. He entered the turbolift and said “Bridge,” then took the thirty seconds of travel time to compose himself. At times, his excitement threatened to manifest itself, and he knew he must maintain the control and decorum befitting the commander of the vessel. He took a deep breath, then another; the ’lift’s motion ceased, and the doors opened on the familiar sight of the calm and ordered bustle that was the bridge of an M-Class battle cruiser: a starship.

Kirk stepped out of the ’lift and Chekov, who was at the science station with Spock, called out, “Kepten on the bridge.” Kirk nodded and said, “Carry on,” and walked to the chair in the well of the circular room. He ran his hand along one of the arms, then with a smooth and unhurried motion stepped up and sank into its comfortable embrace. A smile flickered at the corner of his mouth, and he sighed inaudibly.

It was as though he had never been away.

*

“Ahead one-quarter impulse power, Mr. Sulu.”

Kirk’s familiar instruction was given, and the Asian Captain, now temporarily a Commander again, engaged the great ship’s conventional drive in its lowest setting. No other Star Fleet captain did this; regulations stated that a starship be taken out of space dock on thruster power only. But Jim Kirk was not just any captain; he did it anyway, and the brass, because of who he was, turned a blind eye.

“Aye, captain. One quarter impulse power it is,” said the man still regarded as the best pilot in Star Fleet, as under his expert hands the Enterprise glided smoothly towards the gigantic space doors. As she approached, they slid apart, and the ship surged out into the sparkling blackness of space.

Once they were clear of space dock, Kirk ordered full impulse power to take them out past the moon. Then he spoke to the engine room.

“Mr. Scott, do we have warp power available?”

Many decks below, in an engine room so clean, so spotless that no ship’s engineer of the past would have recognized it, newly-demoted Commander Montgomery Scott glanced fondly at the towering piles of blue-tinged energy that were the heart of the warp drive and replied, “Aye, captain. The auld gel’s ready. Standard warp drive at your command.”

On the bridge, Kirk smiled slightly as he settled back in his chair. He glanced around and caught the eye of everyone there. They nodded back confidently, and Kirk said, “Ahead warp factor two, Mr. Sulu.”

As with any warp drive, there was no sensation felt by those on board. The warp field encompassed the entire ship, and the inertial dampening effect ensured that the incredible acceleration was not felt, or even noticed by the crew.

On the forward viewscreen, a hole appeared to open in space, and the bright points of light that were the stars elongated. Then they were away, their surroundings blurred and gray, the stars streaking by as the Enterprise began to clock up its velocity in multiples of the speed of light.

For a while, Kirk remained on the bridge, and the crew stayed at their stations. The Enterprise had been automated as much as was possible, and carried only the seven of them: Sulu at the helm, Chekov at weapons and navigation, Uhura monitoring sub-space communications, Scotty in the engine room, and Spock at his familiar science station. McCoy, with little to do in his capacity as ship’s doctor, floated between stations, helping wherever he could.

The journey to the far side of the galaxy, with its estimated distance of some eighty-five thousand light years, would take about three months, even at Trans-warp speeds. They had to cross the galactic plane, skirting as close as possible to the edge of the central starry mass while keeping clear of the Great Barrier that guarded it. They had been there once before, and had no desire to see it again.

Also, the central star mass had to be avoided at all costs, due to the enormous gravitational forces present there. In that pulsing heart, some stars were only a few million kilometers apart, constantly at war with each other, their gravity threatening to tear them apart. Travel to them was impossible; even with shields at maximum, any ship that ventured into that region would be destroyed in seconds.

Sitting in the captain’s chair watching his crew going about their business in their usual calm, ordered manner, Kirk thought back to the briefing he had received at Star Fleet on the nature of the mission.

Star Fleet had been given the co-ordinates of the alien system by the Klingons, delivered through a Federation political intermediary, one Richard Snell. At the time, Kirk had found the Klingons surprisingly co-operative and uncharacteristically eager to assist in any way they could. He had plied them with questions, but while they were happy to talk of the system and the planet in general, they had had little information on the aliens themselves, or their planet. But the Klingons had been insistent on one thing: the alien’s benign nature.

Kirk had met with the top brass of Star Fleet who, convinced of the veracity of the Klingon’s information as delivered to them by Snell and his political delegation, had offered him the mission. Kirk was not a wild-eyed idealist; he knew the Enterprise was being used because she was at the end of her useful life, much the same as some of her crew. Whatever the outcome, he knew that this would definitely be the last mission of the “auld gel”, as Scotty liked to call her. When they returned, the Trans-warp drive and its anti-matter would be removed, and the Enterprise would finally be scrapped.

Kirk glanced around the bridge again. He knew that his life was inextricably bound to this ship, and he knew that, when she died, a large part of him would die with her. To say that he was tempted to point her towards deep space and just keep going would not be too fanciful a notion.

*
Later that first evening, ship’s time, Kirk was in his ready room enjoying a glass of fine Arcturian brandy when the door chime sounded.

“Come.”

The door slid aside, and McCoy entered.

“Bones, come in,” said Kirk. “Take a seat. Sorry I can’t offer you any bourbon, but would a brandy do?”

The doctor regarded Kirk with mock sourness. “I know you think all Southerners are Philistines when it comes to what they fancy, so I guess I’ll just have to humor you.” McCoy accepted a glass and sat in a chair near the huge viewport, before which stood the ancient eighteenth-century sailing ship’s wheel. Through the portal could be seen the elongated stripes that were the stars, as seen from a starship traveling at warp speed. The doctor took a sip of his drink and looked at his friend.

“I’ve just heard from Scotty that we’re about to go to Trans-warp speed, and I thought I’d better experience this wonder of the age in the company of someone who knows something about it.” McCoy looked at his old friend again and said, “Jim, just what is this Trans-warp drive, anyway? And why did we have to wait until we were clear of our solar system before we used it?”

Kirk topped up both their glasses and sat back in his chair. “Well, I’m not an engineer, as you well know. If you want the full technical explanation, you’d do better to ask Scotty. After all, his last assignment before he retired was helping iron out the bugs in the system.”

McCoy grinned. “A few of which he helped to create, if I remember correctly.”

They both smiled at the memory of Scotty’s sabotage of the Excelsior, to prevent it from pursuing them on their quest to rescue Spock from the Genesis planet. Then Kirk continued.

“However, all starship captains have to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of how their ships work, so I’ll tell you what I know. As you are aware, standard warp drive is measured on a scale of one to ten. In the past, warp ten, or about five and a half billion kilometers per second, was considered to be as fast as any ship could travel. If you recall, when we went back to the twentieth century to collect a couple of humpbacked whales, we did it by using the sun’s gravitational field to take us to just under warp ten.”

McCoy leaned forward in his chair. “But that took us back in time. Is that what Trans-warp drive is? Time travel?”

Kirk shook his head. “No. That’s what makes it different from ordinary warp drive. The ship’s velocity increases, but without the temporal displacement. We just go on getting faster and faster.”

McCoy pondered this, and took another cautious sip of his brandy. Then he asked, “What’s the limit? Or isn’t there one?”

Kirk shrugged with pretended nonchalance. “During the trials, I believe they had it up to warp seventy-five on the old scale.”

McCoy stared at him. “Warp seventy-five! My God, Jim, that’s….that’s incredible!”

Kirk nodded. “Yes, I’m looking forward to it.”

They contemplated the possibilities for a moment, then McCoy asked, “Why can’t we engage it in a system?”

Kirk shrugged. “Again, I don’t know the technical explanation, but I do know that the consequences might well be disastrous, both for us and any planets that happened to be nearby. The shock-wave caused by the anti-matter displacement could seriously damage….”

Kirk broke off as the chime sounded, and the door slid aside to admit Spock. The Vulcan looked at them, then said, “Excuse me, Captain. I do not wish to intrude. I will return later.”

He made to leave, but Kirk waved him in. “No, come in, Spock. We were just discussing the new drive.” Spock raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Kirk raised the brandy decanter. “Care for a shot?”

Spock looked impassively at them both, then said, “Captain, as Doctor McCoy has observed many times in the past, it would be a waste of good brandy. You know, as does he, that alcohol has no effect on my physiology. Since the purpose of imbibing such spirits is to experience the euphoria caused by their consumption, I see little point…”

“All right, Spock, all right, we get the message.” McCoy grinned at Kirk. “Good old Spock. He never changes. Why use ten words when a hundred will do?”

They were quiet for a moment, then Spock said, “You mentioned you were discussing the warp drive, Captain.”

Kirk nodded, refilling his and McCoy’s glasses again. “Right, right. The doctor was asking why we couldn’t engage Trans-warp drive within a system, and I was attempting to give him the benefit of my limited knowledge. Perhaps you could elaborate.”

Spock looked at McCoy. “I should have thought that the captain would be able to explain that adequately. Has the question not been answered to your satisfaction, doctor?”

McCoy nodded, stifling a belch. “Well, yeah, I guess Jim’s laid out the basics pretty well. But one other thing occurred to me. What about standard warp drive? Why doesn’t that do the same thing?”

Spock looked at Kirk, and the captain gestured for the Vulcan to proceed.
Spock turned back to McCoy, speaking as if reciting the warp drive manual from memory. Which, of course, with some of his own improvements, he was.

“Standard warp drive produces only a small fraction of the anti-matter displacement caused by Trans-warp; consequently, the shock-wave is nowhere near as severe. However, if even standard warp drive were to be activated too near a planet, the results could still be quite calamitous.”

McCoy nodded. He was feeling the effects of the brandy, and was beginning to see things through an alcoholic haze. Carefully, he set his glass on the table between them. “What about actually within a planet’s atmosphere?”

Kirk and Spock looked at each other, and Kirk’s face grew as serious as the Vulcan’s. “Don’t even think about it,” he said.

McCoy looked puzzled. “Why not?”

Kirk looked at Spock, and the Vulcan explained. “The captain’s trepidation is well-founded, doctor. Were a ship equipped with even standard warp drive to engage that drive while still within a planet’s atmosphere, the consequence would be the extinction of all life on that planet.” The blood drained from the doctor’s face as Spock continued. “The anti-matter reaction that ensues when warp drive is engaged would result in the ignition of the oxygen in the planet’s atmosphere, causing a planet-wide flare that would incinerate every living thing on the surface.”

McCoy thought for a moment, then said, “What about under the surface?”

Spock replied, “If by chance there was anyone living under-ground, they might conceivably escape the initial blast, but they would nevertheless perish, due to the oxygen in the atmosphere being consumed. That is why warp drive is never engaged until a ship is well clear of any planets.”

McCoy hunched forward over the table, suddenly cold sober. “My God! In all my years in Star Fleet, I never knew that!”

Spock shrugged unconcernedly. “There is no reason why you should have, doctor. Such matters do not fall within your field of expertise.”

McCoy bristled at the unintended slur. “Now wait just a damned minute! I know I’m just a country sawbones, but it would have been nice to know, all the same!” He looked at Kirk. “Twenty-seven years, Jim, you and I rode around on a potential world-destroyer and you never said a word.”

Kirk shrugged. “The subject never came up, Bones. The only reason it has now is because we’re using a new type of drive.” He glanced at the ship’s chronometer on the wall. “Which, I might say, is about to be deployed.” He stood up, and the others followed suit. “Coming, Mr. Spock? Doctor?”

McCoy groaned. “Not me, Jim. I’m going to my cabin, where I will attempt to finish with good Tennessee bourbon what you started with that Arcturian rotgut.”

Kirk smiled as they stepped out of his cabin. “Suit yourself, but it should be something to see.”

McCoy shook his head. “You two go ahead. All I want to see is the inside of my cabin, and my bunk.”

With that, he set off, more or less steadily, down the corridor, leaving Kirk and Spock to travel to the bridge.

***