Greg Cox: Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Time

Tera felt the blade against her jugular. It nicked her skin, drawing blood. She whimpered, not certain what was happening. Was someone really trying to rescue her?

“Last chance!” Jase hollered. “I’m not bluffing here. Human life means less than dirt to me. It’s what we’re out to eradicate!”

“All right,” a male voice responded from just outside the door. “Don’t do anything hasty. I’m coming in.”

Holding his hands up where Jase could see them, a stranger entered the bunker. He was a fit, good-looking white guy, in nondescript civilian attire, with sandy brown hair and the cool, confident manner of a professional soldier or cop. He reminded Tera of some of the astronauts and pilots her father had trained with, but as far as she knew, she had never seen him before. He held up two small electronic devices, about the size of compact phones. She didn’t recognize the brand.

“Where’s your weapon?” Jase demanded. “Get rid of it!”

The stranger dropped a small metallic gadget onto the floor. “The other one is just my communicator,” he explained, his eyes meeting hers. “Good to see you, Ms. O’Herlihy. I was hoping to find you here.”

“Who are you?” Jase interrogated him. “FBI? CIA? Special Forces?”

“My name is Kirk,” he said, speaking to Tera instead. “I’m a friend of your father.”

“Of course you are!” Jase tightened his grip around her waist, keeping her between him and the intruder. “You hear that, Tera? Your loving dad called in the troops, even after we warned him what would become of you if he did. Guess he cares more about his precious Saturn mission than his own daughter’s life. How sick is that? What more proof can there be that the human species doesn’t deserve to survive?” He spit at the floor. “The sooner we’re gone, the sooner the Earth can start recovering from the damage we’ve inflicted on her.”

“You’ve got the wrong idea,” Kirk said. “Humanity is growing up and learning from its mistakes. It won’t be easy, but we can discover effective ways to live in harmony with the Earth and, eventually, a multitude of other worlds, too. You just need to have faith in our potential as a species and give the future a chance.”

“Bullshit!” Jase snarled. “We’ve had enough chances. We’re a mistake, an evolutionary accident that should have died out ages ago, before we screwed up the entire planet. We’re mutants. We’re not entitled to a future!” He pricked Tera’s neck with the knife. “Now, shut up and call off your people!”

“All right. You’re in charge.” Kirk held out his communicator. “Just let me tell my forces to stand down. No tricks, I promise.”

“I have a better idea,” Jase said, apparently in no hurry to become a martyr. Loosening his grip on Tera’s waist but keeping the knife pressed to her throat, he turned his palm upward. “Toss that thing over to me.”

“Okay. Here goes.” Kirk lobbed it to Jase. “Just flip it open. They’re expecting my signal.”

Jase fumbled with the device, which chirped as he opened it. “No tricks,” he reminded Kirk. He held the communicator up to his lips. “Hello? Is anybody there? Can you hear me?”

“Aye,” a voice answered with a pronounced Scottish brogue. “And who might ye be?”

“This is Jase Zero, commander of the Human Extinction League. We have hostages, who will be sacrificed if our demands are not met.”

“Is that so? And do I understand that ye are the gentleman who is holding that poor lassie against her will?”

“That’s right. And you’d better pay attention if you don’t want to listen to her scream. Do you get me?”

“Aye, I’m reading you, mister. That’s all I need to know.”

A sudden green glow lit up the bunker, stunning Tera from head to toe. She heard Jase’s knife clatter to the floor. Her brain went blank.

And that was all she remembered.

2020

Kirk awoke in sickbay with a headache.

“Ugh,” he groaned. “Remind me not to do that again.”

McCoy applied a hypospray to his throat. “Here. This should help.”

A hiss released the analgesic into his bloodstream. The pounding in his head dulled to a mild throb.

“Any better?” McCoy asked.

“Yes, thanks.” Kirk sat up and looked around. Spock stood at the foot of the bed, waiting patiently for the captain to recover. Kirk was eager to receive his report. “Tera?”

“Safe,” Spock stated. “The wide-dispersal burst from the ship’s phasers stunned everyone within a one-kilometer radius. The landing party encountered no resistance and was able to recover the young woman without difficulty. She has been returned to her family with no memory of anything after the phaser rendered all of you unconscious. The authorities, alerted by an anonymous source, have made a successful raid on the compound. All terrorists present at the site have been taken into custody.”

“Good,” Kirk said, relieved to hear that the rescue mission had gone off more or less as planned. Given a choice, he would have preferred not to get stunned along with HEL, but a lingering headache was a small price to pay for Tera’s safety. He wondered if word of her deliverance had reached the Lewis & Clark yet. In theory, the spaceship would already be creeping back toward Earth now. O’Herlihy still had several months to go before he could be reunited with his daughter, but at least both of them had survived their ordeal. “Well done, Mr. Spock. My compliments to your landing party… and Mr. Scott, of course.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Spock replied. “I must say, the human capacity for irrationality never ceases to perplex me. For sentient beings to advocate the extinction of their own species, even after a long history of environmental blunders, defies logic.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that score.” Kirk shook his head at the self-loathing nihilism that had spewed from the kidnapper’s lips. “I’m just thankful that Zoe was able to give us the precise coordinates of HEL’s headquarters and a rough map of its layout. That made rescuing Tera much less of a gamble.”

“But are we sure we did the right thing?” McCoy said. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad we saved the girl and all, but aren’t we tampering with history?”

“Perhaps not, Doctor,” Spock said. “I have been making a deeper study of the historical records of this decade, and it seems that the Human Extinction League was indeed shut down by the authorities in the fall of 2020 and ultimately failed to inflict any significant harm on humanity. They are, in fact, nothing but an inconsequential footnote from this day forward. Furthermore, it seems that one Tera Franklin, née O’Herlihy, is destined to lead one of the early Ares missions to Mars in 2033. Carrying on in her father’s footsteps, as it were.”

Shades of Shaun Christopher, Kirk thought. “What about O’Herlihy himself?”

“Officially, he ‘retires’ from the space program shortly after his return from Saturn. His ground-breaking studies of Saturn and its moons, however, will help pave the way for future exploration of the outer Sol system, as well as the eventual colonization of Titan in the twenty-second century.”

Kirk was gratified to hear it. “So, there’s nothing about mutiny and sabotage in the tapes?”

“Not officially. Evidence suggests that the government will go to great lengths to cover up much of what truly occurred on the mission, including the encounter with the alien probe and the radical fluctuations in Saturn’s rings and atmosphere.”

“That seems a tad excessive,” McCoy said. “I can see whitewashing O’Herlihy’s misdeeds out of the history books, but why suppress major scientific discoveries?”