STAR TREK: Time Keeper

A Splintered Mind

Romulan Space

It was an odd sensation, Jim Kirk thought to himself, as he sat in the co-pilot seat of the small-sized ship as it traveled through Romulan space while cloaked. It had nearly been two years since Kirk and Spock, while acting on orders from Starfleet, boarded a Romulan vessel and stole a cloaking device.

In order to escape the Romulan Empire back then, Kirk had Scotty connect the strange device, which rendered ships invisible; and it worked. The Enterprise easily sped away from the Romulan ship chasing them, and made it back to Federation territory with not only the cloaking device, but a captured Romulan commander and her tactical knowledge. Kirk often wondered what had happen to her, the Romulan commander.

Kirk was roused out of his memories by the sound of Sean Landis's voice.

"What were you thinking about," Sean asked, sitting in the pilot's seat.

Sean Landis was the husband of Carol Marcus, and the step-father of Jim and Carol's son; David. Kirk looked over at Sean. As it turned out, Sean Landis was an alias, because his real name was Nicholas Tolbert and he was an agent of the F.S.B.; the Federation Security Bureau.

"Old memories from my last visit into Romulan space," Kirk replied. "By the way," Kirk continued, "what should I call you?"

"Sean," Sean replied. "And as for your mission to steal the cloaking device a couple years back," Sean went on to say, "it was I who prepped Starfleet with the mission parameters; you and Mr. Spock did quite well."

But as Jim listened to Sean's side of the "Enterprise Incident", another strange sensation came over the starship captain. It felt as though his mind was merging with another person's mind. It wasn't just another person's mind, however, it was her mind; the young Vulcan girl Jim had seen inside his dreams and thoughts recently. But this time, she aged before his eyes and was no longer a young girl but an adult Vulcan female; and from Kirk's point of view, she was sitting right behind Sean Landis in one of the passenger's seats. She wore a very sheer gown that hid very little.

Sean was going on about his travels in the Romulan Empire as Kirk stared at the Vulcan woman who was and wasn't there. But now that she was in adult form, Kirk recognized her immediately. Her name was Sajah, and Kirk knew who she was. While squaring off with Gordon West during the "lost Condor" incident (previous storyline to this one), Sajah forcibly entered Jim's thoughts via a mind-meld to retrieve a suppressed memory from his past. Luckily, Kirk was able to ward her off and actually believed her to be dead after Gordon West's compound had been destroyed.

"You are probably wondering how and why I am here," her voice said to Kirk. It was strange, because even though Jim could see her image sitting behind Sean Landis, she did not move her lips when she spoke. "You and I shared something intimate and I feel obligated to continue that sharing."

And then…she was gone.

"Jim," Sean said, seeing the dazed look in Kirk's eyes, "are you alright?"

Kirk shook his head to clear the cobwebs in his mind.

"Sorry about that, Sean," Kirk said with a smile, "all this reminiscing about Romulans and stolen cloaking devices has that effect on me," Kirk said, brushing off Sean's worry. Kirk looked one more time in the direction of the passenger cabin and didn't see her; didn't see Sajah.

"As I was saying," Sean continued, "we're coming upon a debris field. We will stay cloaked, but take a look and see what we can find."

Sean brought his ship, which he called Delphi-2, out of warp and sure enough; there was a large debris field.

"Is it possible that their ship was atta…" Kirk began to say as he worried about Spock, but Sean cut him off.

"No," Sean said, as he looked at the scanner on the main panel, "My ship's sensors are detecting the mass of two Romulan birds of prey. The ship that Spock, Charvon and Linav are aboard is not among this debris, however," Sean added, "it would appear as if two ships were recently in the area due to disturbances in the eddy flows."

Kirk thought for a moment.

"I suggest we just continue on to the coordinates Commodore Mendez gave us," Kirk concluded. "It is there where he suggested the Romulans are conducting their tests of the Time-Keeper device, and if we're lucky, Spock and the others will be there too."

Sean considered Kirk's words as he studied the eddy flows.

"The two other ships that were recently here observing this debris field, as we are doing now, went off in the same direction," Sean concluded, "but the sensors are reading about an hour difference in their departures."

"With these blasted cloaking devices," Kirk offered, "they may not have seen each other. Heck," Kirk added, "for all we know, there might be several Romulan ships in this vicinity right now; but invisible to our eyes."

Sean nodded his head.

"True," Sean said, as he plotted a new course. "But we shall do as you said, and continue on our way to those coordinates. Those other two ships have about a three to four hour start on us, so we got some catching up to do."

And with that, the Delphi-2 went into warp speed. Jim Kirk could only wonder if Spock was alive or dead, and more importantly, was Sean Landis going to be forthright with total information.

Landis was a spy after all, and Jim Kirk had spent much of his youth reading the exploits of a fictional British double-0 agent and one thing was always the same in those tales; trust could get you killed in that line of business.

Starbase-16

Commodore Mendez sat at his desk and activated his monitor. A signal was coming in on a hyper-subspace channel and was scrambled. Only an encrypted code could unscramble the message, and of course, Mendez knew what it was.

"Code 15580-Omega-18870," Mendez spoke, softly.

And then the monitor came to life and displayed the face of a strong and proud Klingon officer who was rumored to be the next Chancellor of the Empire, if fate so favored him. His name was Gorkon.

"Commodore Mendez," Gorkon said with piercing eyes, "I trust you have a favorable update on our joint venture."

Mendez smiled back at Gorkon; and the two continued their conversation…

Continued…