The Autobiography of James T. Kirk (6 page)

School was canceled the next day, and it was sometime late the next evening when my mother came to get me from the Leightons’. As I packed my things, I heard Mom talking quietly to them in the kitchen. I approached the doorway where they were seated around the table, to listen without being noticed.

“… the council isn’t giving us any instructions,” Barbara said. “The hospital management has been waiting for word about supply distribution.”

“They’ve got to have a plan,” Rod said. “They’ll figure it out.”

“I think you’ve got too much faith in them,” Barbara said. She turned to Mom. “Have you heard anything?”

“They’re afraid to start food production,” Mom said. “The spores are still in the air. We haven’t figured out how to counteract them.”

“If they can’t start food production—” Rod said.

“Jim, ready to go?” It was Barbara, who caught sight of me near the doorway. Mom thanked the Leightons. As we were leaving, Barbara gave my mother a hug.

“It’ll be okay,” Barbara said. My mother, though six inches taller, looked like a young girl next to Barbara, who had a natural maternal air about her.

As we were leaving, two security officers drove up to us in a hover car. One of them was Osterlund, the man who came to our apartment the first day I arrived. He looked different, less friendly, and he and the other security man with him now wore sidearms. He sat in the front passenger seat.

“Winona,” he said. “You shouldn’t be out here. Get in, I’ll drive you home.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve got my car—”

“Get in,” he said, placing his hand on his holster. “It’s for your own protection. You shouldn’t be out in your own vehicle. You can retrieve it tomorrow.”

Mom instinctively put her arm around me.

“Peter, what the hell is—”

“I said get in!” He now withdrew his weapon, an old pre-Starfleet phase pistol.

Mom looked at the weapon, then nodded to me. We got in the back of the hover car, and the security men drove us in silence back to our apartment. After a long beat, my mother finally spoke.

“Peter, what’s going on?”

Osterlund exchanged a look with his partner, who was driving.

“You might as well tell her,” the partner said. “They’re going to find out soon anyway.”

“Find out what?” Mom said.

Osterlund turned to us in the back.

“Governor Kodos has declared martial law.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Mom said. “Why would this crisis be handled any differently than anything else—”

“The governor doesn’t agree with you,” Osterlund said. I didn’t know this security man well, but I could see that giving him a gun and the right to use it had granted him a kind of power he was enjoying.

“So he … he’s overthrown the council?”

The security men didn’t answer. The hover car pulled over in front of our building.

“Stay inside until you receive instructions.”

We got out of the hover car and Mom took me inside. She looked ashen, a vacant look in her eyes.

“Mom,” I said. “What’s martial law?”

“It’s … it’s when there’s no more democracy. When the military takes over the government, and one man at the top of the hierarchy is making all the decisions. It’s usually only in an emergency.”

“Tom told me about the food,” I said. “So couldn’t this be a good thing?”

“Come on, it’s late, you should get ready for bed.” She didn’t answer my question.

A few moments later, there was an official announcement. It came over the emergency public address system that was installed in all the buildings in the colony. The message just said what Mom and I already knew, that martial law had been declared, and a curfew was now in effect. The announcer said that the food emergency was being handled and that everyone should stay in their homes and await specific instructions from the government. This news didn’t seem to give my mother any comfort, but it confirmed for me my faith in adults to take care of things. I went to bed as I did every night.

Several hours later, I was jostled awake. I turned to see Tom Leighton standing over my bed.

“Come on,” he said. “Something big is happening.”

“Tom, how did you—”

“Shh …” he said. “Just come on, I’ll explain on the way.”

Waking up for another of his late-night adventures didn’t take any convincing. I quickly got dressed and we climbed out of my first-floor window, which is how Tom got in. We quietly moved through the deserted streets, hiding in alleys and behind garbage cans when security patrols drove past. We noticed several of the cars had other colonists in the backseat, and they were all headed toward the center square of the colony.

“A couple of security guys came and got my parents,” he told me. “They thought I was asleep when they left, but I followed them. People have been gathering there for almost an hour now.”

We were a few buildings from the square when Tom stopped me. I could see the large square was almost full now; there had to be thousands of people in there. A barricade had been erected on the boulevard to the entrance to the square, where a security man stood guard. Tom indicated a door to a nearby building that bordered the square, and we quickly slipped inside.

“We’ll have a better view of what’s going on from the roof,” he said, as we climbed the stairs.

We got to the roof and, crouching, moved toward the end that bordered the square. We hid behind the ledge. We could see security guards on some of the other roofs, but their focus was on the people down below; we were just lucky that one wasn’t posted on ours. I noticed that all the entrances to the square had been barricaded. It looked like no one could get in or out without permission.

“You see my folks?” Tom said. We scanned the crowd for a long time. The square was well lit, and I was able to find Tom’s parents at the far end. Rod held Barbara in his arms. Even from as far away as we were, I could see that they were scared. I started to wonder about my mother; I had just assumed when I left our apartment she was asleep in her room, but now I realized that she might be in the square as well. I started searching for her when everyone’s attention was drawn to the building at the head of the square. It was the building next to us. Two guards flanked the entrance to the roof of that building as a slight, redheaded man with a beard stepped out onto that roof and approached a lectern at the roof’s edge.

“I am Governor Kodos,” he said. “The Tarsus Governing Council has been dissolved.” He then took a pause. “The revolution is successful.”

There were audible gasps in the crowd. People seemed confused and worried. Revolution?

“What does he mean—” Tom said. I shushed him as Kodos continued.

“But survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore, I have no alternative but to sentence you to death.” He took out a piece of paper.

“Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, governor of Tarsus IV.”

There was numb silence.

“Execution … ?” Tom said. As he did, I saw all the security men, both those on the roofs and at the barricades, take out their weapons and fire. The silence was broken by screams as high-energy weapons burned the people. I frantically scanned the crowd looking for Mom when my gaze fell on Rod and Barbara. Rod tried to protect Barbara as a blue beam of light hit them both. They screamed in pain, then turned to blackened ash before falling to dust.

“No!” It was Tom; he’d seen it as well and was already standing up. I saw that Tom’s scream had gotten the attention of one of the guards near Kodos. He brought up his weapon …

I grabbed Tom and tackled him. He was screaming as he fell to the roof.

“Tom, be quiet. We gotta …” I looked at him. Half his face seemed covered with dirt. He was screaming, and I tried to brush it off, when I realized it wasn’t dirt; his skin was horribly burned. When I tackled him the beam must have still glanced off his face; the whole left side was charred, the skin flapping in seared pieces. His left eye socket was a blackened hole. He wailed in pain and I could do nothing.

A guard leaped over from the other roof and aimed his weapon at us. I looked up into the barrel of the pistol, disbelieving …

“Stop!” The voice was from behind the guard.

Kodos. He walked over to me.

“What’s your name?” he said.

“J-James Tiberius … Kirk.”

Kodos turned to the guard who was holding the gun on us. As if obeying a silent order, he put the weapon away and took out a reader. He checked a list, turned to Kodos, and nodded.

“And who’s he?” Kodos was referencing Tom, whose screams had faded to crying.

“Tom Leighton,” I said.

The guard checked the list again. Another guard came over from another roof.

“Rod Leighton?” the guard with the reader said. “Rod Leighton is here on the register …” He was about to raise his weapon.

“It’s Tom!” I shouted it. “This is Tom Leighton!”

Kodos looked over the guard’s shoulder and indicated something on the reader. The guard lowered his weapon.

“Get the boy to a hospital,” Kodos said.

They took Tom, and Kodos then turned to me.

“You go home,” he said. “You’re in violation of curfew.” He then walked away.

I stood up and got a view of the square. It was filled with blackened ash in the shape of human bodies. Security men entered with a large mobile cleaner. They carved a path through the ash, sucking it up inside the machine. The people were all gone.

I wandered home in a fog and climbed into my window. I stood for a very long time in my bedroom, unable to move. I wanted to know if Mom was in the square. Her room was only a few feet away. I was afraid that I would find her gone. I don’t know how long I stood there, unable to make a decision. Finally, I took a step toward the doorway of my room, then another. I went out into the hallway. The door to her room was closed. I gently slid it open a crack. The sheets and blanket were crumpled at the edge of the bed. I slid the door open a little more: I saw the bottom hem of her nightgown and her feet. She was there. Asleep. I gently slid the door closed and went back into my room. I don’t remember going to sleep that night, but I did eventually, because I was awakened the next morning by the sound of my mother’s crying.

I never told her what happened, and when Tom came to live with us, he didn’t talk about it either. I don’t know why I didn’t want to tell my mother; most likely because I couldn’t face reliving the tragedy of what I’d witnessed. Mom couldn’t get any answers out of the security force about how Tom received his injuries, and she was reluctant to press Tom himself, who was traumatized for a long time. He wore a patch over the whole left side of his face; the surgeon who would’ve been able to reconstruct his face had been killed in the square. That surgeon was, ironically, his mother. As an adult, he could’ve had his face reconstructed, but he chose not to, and would wear that patch until the day he died, as a remembrance of his lost parents.

But shortly after the tragedy, Mom’s attitude changed toward me. I don’t know if she saw me more as an adult, or I was acting like one, but before, she had sought to protect me from information I might not be ready for; now she shared everything with me. Looking back, I now think she needed help getting through it. She’d lost a lot of friends in the massacre, and we only had each other.

The execution was made public, and it had the desired effect on the remaining populace. No one dared question Governor Kodos’s orders. Life continued on Tarsus as the remaining food and water were rationed and we awaited the relief. There was a lot of quiet discussion among the survivors about how Kodos had made his decisions about who would live and who would die. It defied logic; in some cases, whole families were killed; in others, like Tom’s, one or another would be spared.

Finally, Mom introduced me to a friend, Kotaro Kimura, who worked in data analysis for the hospital. Kotaro’s parents, Hoshi and Takashi, had been among the first settlers of Tarsus IV, and they were among those massacred. He told Mom that Kodos had used the medical database, plugging an algorithm into it based on his own theories about who was most useful in the colony. None of the survivors knew exactly why they were valuable in his eyes, which made everyone feel that much more insecure about their status; he could always change his mind.

But two weeks after the executions, something very strange happened. Mom was waiting for me one day when Tom and I got out of school.

“Kodos is dead,” Mom told us.

“What happened?” I said.

“No one knows,” she said. “The security people found his body, burned in his quarters. The governing council is re-forming, and they’re appointing a new governor.”

“The bastard deserves it,” Tom said. “I wish it was me who’d done it.”

Mom put her hand on Tom’s shoulder.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Who killed him?”

“It looks like suicide,” Mom said.

Suddenly, there was the tingling sound of what seemed like wind chimes. It was the first time I’d ever heard, and then seen, the effect of matter transportation. I turned and saw three Starfleet officers appear.