Chapter 2
Admiral Mifune Indulges a Whim
Stardate 2365.360
The Starfleet archives in some ways resembled the libraries of old. As the repository of artifacts gathered from its many missions across the galaxy from civilizations both old and new, there were honest to goodness books and scrolls throughout, meticulously catalogued and cared for with the utmost reverence. Admiral Hiro Mifune loved being here. He always felt if he stood in the main chamber and closed his eyes, he could literally soak in the combined knowledge of those hundreds of civilizations. This time however, he did not have time to indulge. Armed with the ultimate hall pass, he was on his way to the top-secret archives of past Starfleet missions. A few weeks ago he, along with a team of experts in numerous disciplines, had been asked to look into why the Romulans had secretly sent a mission into Federation space about a year ago to sniff around the Beta Virginis system. There were ruins from an ancient civilization on the third planet, so to make sure they had all of their bases covered, they had called him in as the fleet's pre-eminent archaeologist to see if there was anything there the Romulans might be interested in. No one thought there would be any link – the Romulans were not known to care about such things, but the powers that be wanted to be sure just in case.
The Admiral had been given temporary access to any item in the entire archive, that being the level of concern over the incursion. He was expected to look in the relevant parts of the archive, only those pertaining to the ruins in the Beta Virginis system. And to his credit, that was exactly what he had done. But, since there was precious little information about the ruins in the first place, and no one seriously thought there was a connection anyway, he had finished his report quickly. To be fair, the main reason he finished quickly was because he already knew why the Romulans had entered Federation space, and realized it was nothing that would in any way harm the Federation's interests. No one else knew that of course, hence the unlimited access hall pass.
Admiral Mifune had been given three weeks to get his report done, had finished in three days, and just couldn't resist. In addition to being an archaeologist, his current occupation, he used to be a warp physicist and in fact had made significant contributions to the improvement in warp engines. That was not why he was heading toward the mission records department however. No. One of his other occupations, more of a hobby really, was as the definitive biographer of one James Tiberius Kirk. As much acclaim as the tome received, the Admiral had always known it was incomplete. Incomplete, because as with all things Starfleet, there were always missions that needed to be kept secret. He knew this and had completely understood at the time he had written the book, that he could not publish certain things. He had hoped though, that he would at least have been allowed to view certain records to clear up some inconsistencies that had bothered him. Alas, it was not to be and he had dutifully published the biography complete with inconsistencies, holes in the story, and all. Until now, he had not really thought much about the biography; he had written it over twenty years ago after all. When Admiral Lucas had given him this latest assignment however, there was little else he could think about. The chance to finally see what Kirk had been doing in Romulan space when he came back with that female Romulan Captain! And the Federation Empire? What was that all about?
Well now he was finally going to find out and he couldn't wait! He had two weeks to look at anything he wanted and he intended to make the best use of the time as he could. He had to be careful of course. If Admiral Lucas found out he was rooting around in records that were not specific to his assignment, he would have a lot of explaining to do.
He finally arrived at the relevant section and held up his access card for the librarian in charge of this section.
"Thank you Admiral Mifune. Take room fourteen, down the hall to the left. The room will lock as soon as you enter. If you need to open it, there are controls to the left of the door," and he went back to look at whatever it was that the Admiral had just interrupted.
Hiro found the room and entered, it consisted of a comfortable looking chair facing a small table and semicircular screen from floor to ceiling. On the screen were the words: "Welcome Admiral Mifune. What can I help you with?"
Sweeter words had never been written he thought. He knew exactly where he wanted to start. Back on stardate 5027.3, Kirk had made an unauthorized incursion into Romulan space. He had returned with a beautiful Romulan captain. Instead of being thrown out of Starfleet and sent to a penal colony, the minimum punishment any thinking person would have expected he had retained command of the Enterprise and gone on with his primary mission as if nothing had happened. The official story was that he had deceived his crew into going into Romulan space and then gone crazy, necessitating his first officer, Commander Spock, to take command of the ship. That story of course made no kind of sense to anyone. After all, he had violated the treaty governing entry into the neutral zone and risked interstellar war with the Federation's most formidable enemy, but that was the official line and all of his previous entreaties for clarification had gone unanswered. Well now, after more than twenty years, he would know the whole story!
After a week in the mission section, Hiro felt as content as a pig in slop. He had already cleaned up questions he had about the Tholian web mission, and learned why a rather straightforward mission to Risa had been classified. Suffice it to say that if it were made public, Captain Kirk would have had to answer some pretty embarrassing questions about this violation of the prime directive. The Romulan incursion was a secret mission authorized at the highest level of Starfleet to steal their cloaking device? Amazing! Captain Kirk had to have known that the chance of success was vanishingly small, yet had risked his life anyway! To think that that mission eventually brought the Romulans to the negotiating table to sign the treaty of Algernon, where the Federation agreed to halt all research into cloaking technology! It was almost too much to process as the boldness of the plan went beyond even the craziest of the latest holo-vids the kids were watching these days – or so he had heard.
It was late by the time he got through all of the mission logs on the Romulan incursion and he put the last one down with a deep sense of satisfaction. He would have stayed longer if the librarian had not just reminded him for the third time that closing time had passed quite a while ago. No matter, tomorrow he would tackle the alternate universe incident, one of the most mysterious of Kirk's missions.
As a physicist, Hiro knew that scientists had postulated the existence of alternate universes for hundreds of years. Until the Kirk mission however, the only reason they had thought the concept possible, was because it did not violate the math that described the current understanding of universe's formation and existence. There had never been any actual proof of alternate universes. That mission had generated a whole new branch of research into fundamental physics. Much effort had gone into duplicating the conditions under which Kirk had been transported to the alternate universe, but as far as he knew, all of those efforts had been unsuccessful. But even if they had managed it, why classify the mission? The broad outlines of it were already public knowledge. The Enterprise had been caught in an ion storm, which caused them to be exchanged with their counterparts in the alternate universe when they had tried to beam down to the planet they were orbiting. Although extraordinary, Hiro could not imagine what could have happened to Kirk that would have warranted a top-secret classification, at the highest-level possible, of the remaining details. Well, tomorrow he would find out. The anticipation was almost too much to bear!
The next day Hiro was at the entrance to the archives early, and had to wait impatiently for the librarian to open up. As soon as he was let in he made a beeline to the mission archives, sat himself down and opened the first file. He wanted to go over Captain Kirk's ship's log first to see how accurate his knowledge of the mission really was.
Three hours in he got his first surprise. Up until this point, the crew had transported to the alternate universe where the Federation was an empire. Unusual, but nothing he didn't already know. Captain Kirk had retired to his quarters to find a very beautiful woman waiting for him - a Captain's woman! Hiro's first thought was that this was a rather sensible idea. There were undoubtedly a large percentage of the current captains in Starfleet who would wholeheartedly agree with him, and would jump at the chance to 'staff up' so to speak (pun intended). And that, of course was why this particular tidbit of information had been classified he thought, and smiled.
The next hour passed quickly and then he finally got to it. The secret to the success of the Kirk from the alternate universe, where advancement within the ranks was had by forming alliances and sometimes by assassinating your superiors. Kirk had had a hole card, the Tantalus Field! The device could actually target an object and disintegrate it from a distance. Amazing. The physicist in him wondered how it could be done with a gadget that was less than a half-meter cubed. Starfleet could accomplish something similar by transporting an object from one place and then not integrating it in another, but the transport apparatus was huge by comparison, not nearly as precise, and required a separate mechanism such as a communicator to focus in on a person or other object. The Tantalus device could focus in on an area within its range such that you could actually see on its screen in real time what you were about to destroy.
Hiro learned that Kirk had found the technology among the ancient ruins of some extinct civilization on one of his many missions, and secreted it back to his quarters. He had been rapidly rising in the ranks ever since. Fascinating! If Starfleet had this type of technology in its arsenal it would be a real game changer.
Wait.
The universes were effectively identical. If the device was in the alternate universe, then it should be in this one. Starfleet must have looked for the device; it was much too valuable not to have done so. As far as Hiro knew however, there was no such device in Starfleet. The mission happened over eighty years ago and even if Starfleet had decided to keep its existence secret all these years, as a physicist and Starfleet officer, Hiro would have seen evidence of the use of a new game changing technology, yet he had not. They must not have found it! That had to be the reason this mission remained secret, and rightfully so! If Starfleet had not found the device, they certainly did not want some lucky prospector to run across it. Hiro skipped ahead and there it was, the records detailing the search for the device.
He saw that the record of the search had a lot more information in it than all of the other records of the mission put together. If he started in on it now, he would not want to put it down, so since it was nearing closing time again, he decided to call it a day. Tomorrow, if he did not stop, he figured he could get through the whole file by day's end. Even if Starfleet had not found the device, the records could still help him to plug some holes in his knowledge of the Kirk story.
It was his last day of his all access pass. The last chance Hiro would have to plumb the secrets of his second favorite hero – after his grandfather of course. He looked at the records he hadn't had time to get to and started to miss the time he'd had here already. He considered that maybe he should skip the records of the search for the Tantalus Device, since he knew Starfleet had not found it anyway, and try to get through some of the other missions he was curious about. No, he decided. If he did that, he'd have an incomplete picture of the mission, something his personality would not let him do.
Starfleet assumed that the empire Kirk's first use of the device was to wrest leadership of the Enterprise, so they looked at the man's missions this universe and listed every planet he had ever visited from shortly before he had made Captain, all the way to when he had visited the mirror universe. They determined which ones had ancient ruins and then sent teams to all of them to see what they could find. The whole operation was very 'hush hush,' which was remarkable in itself, given the amount of resources that was brought to bear. When nothing was found, they went back to the planets they had originally eliminated from consideration. Maybe these had ruins they knew nothing about. When they didn't find anything there, they looked at all of his missions for three years before he made Captain. All of the searches came up empty. In all, the operation took five years and consumed an enormous portion of Starfleet's total research budget. The Appendix listed all of the worlds that were looked at, nearly a hundred of them, and what was found. Some of it was interesting from an archaeological point of view, but no alien technology was ever seen. As he looked at the list, there was something that didn't seem right. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. Having written the definitive biography of the man, Hiro had a pretty comprehensive knowledge of Kirk's life. If he was honest with himself however, he had to admit that at his age, his memory was not what it used to be, and he had written the book many years ago. It was time to leave anyway. He decided to dig up his old files on the Captain when he got home and see if anything in them jogged his memory.
That evening Hiro retired satisfied. He had learned about many of the mysteries that had bothered him for decades and even though he could not revise his biography of Kirk to take them into account, he was content that at least he himself knew the true story. Hiro figured he could die a happy man. His dreams were filled with the adventures of the great Captain and the role his grandfather had played in those missions.
Throughout his pleasant dreams, however, something in the back of his mind competed for space with a particularly interesting one involving a Captain's woman with pointy ears. What was that all about, he thought? She even spoke to him,
"Think Hiro."
He pushed the nagging thought aside. My goodness this woman was beautiful!
"What did you miss Hiro?"
And what was with the elaborate headdress, he thought.
"Hiro, you have to find it!"
He looked into her eyes. He could get lost in those eyes, he thought pleasantly. Black as midnight. Did he see stars there? That seemed impossible, but it was a dream after all. Hiro decided to go with it. He looked deeper. Clouds. Mixed with stars? That made no sense. Oh, must be a nebula. Yes, that's what it was.
Hiro bolted upright.
"No, no, no!" He exclaimed.
It couldn't be true! He needed to check his notes from the biography right away. He checked the time. 2am. No matter. He jumped out of bed, and nearly tripped over the shoes he had left on the floor.
He rushed to his office on the floor below.
"Please tell me I'm wrong!"
He fumbled around in the dark for the light on his desk and finally managed to find it. Now where had he put his keys? Some more fumbling as he opened a drawer of seeming junk and rooted around in it. He finally resorted to dumping the contents on the floor and found the keys. He used the keys to open the drawer on the left and took out his most precious possession, the Kirk diary his grandfather Sulu had given him when he was a young boy. He flipped the delicate pages as quickly as he dared. It didn't take him long. There it was. Beta Virginis. He scanned the details. The Kirk in this universe was on his way to the third planet to study it and the nearby nebula that mysteriously interfered with ship systems. Right before he arrived in system however, the Enterprise had been called away on some humanitarian mission to another system a few weeks travel away. Beta Virginis was not on the search list he had just looked at a few hours ago, he was sure of it. Starfleet had not thought to search the planet, because it was never entered into the ship's logs as an actual visit. Hiro realized that in the alternate universe, the bad Kirk must have stopped in system and gone down to the planet. Evil empires do not do humanitarian missions.
The Admiral was certain there was a good chance the Tantalus device, or devices, along with who knew what other advanced technologies, were amongst the ruins the Federation had catalogued on the planet Kirk had passed. His first instinct was to immediately wake up Admiral Lucas and let him know of his discovery. That would be the sensible thing to do. It was too much of a coincidence that Ruwon had wanted to visit the planet that just happened to possess technology that could easily change the balance of power in the known galaxy. Admiral Mifune didn't believe in coincidences. She had originally told him that she just wanted to search for the origin planet of the Romulans and Vulcans and he knew there was some validity to that claim. Scholars on Vulcan who studied such things, never took seriously any claims of ancient technologies relating to the origin planet though. The closest anyone came to mentioning technology was a theory that the reason for the fall of the civilization that led to the colonization of Vulcan in the first place, was a war that rendered the original planet uninhabitable. But it was speculation only and not documented in any way even in the oral histories. Also, ever the Starfleet officer, Hiro had placed stealth satellites in orbit around the two planets Ruwon wanted to visit to observe her movements. True to her word, she never landed on either planet. If her true intention was to find ancient technology, a landing party was mandatory. Still, if she had suspected the satellites were there, there were steps she could have taken to defeat their simple systems. What to do? On the one hand, this was the opportunity he and Ruwon had discussed. On the other, there was never any question of her loyalty to the Romulan people, if not to the current leadership. And the Romulans were known to make ostensibly peaceable overtures to citizens in the Federation only to turn on them, the latest victim being Mr. Spock himself about ten years ago.
Again, what to do?
Hiro just could not wrap his head around the idea of Ruwon betraying him. She had proved honorable for many years now, and her information had always been reliable.
Still.
He decided to sleep on it. In the morning he would have to call Lucas. He hoped he could think of something by then.
After a few hours Hiro gave up on trying to get a good night's sleep; too many things weighed heavy on his mind. No, that was not correct. Hiro always endeavored to be honest with himself. What he really wanted and needed to know was if Lyret had betrayed him. He put on his slippers and grabbed his uniform jacket to ward off the cold. He made his way downstairs and out the back door. It was only a short walk to the back of his property to his "other" office. He fumbled with the lock, entered, and removed the tarp covering the terminal there. He sat down and initiated the sequence, and smiled. It always amused him to enter this series of commands. Ahh, the little things, he mused. The thought settled him. He knew he was about to have one of the most difficult conversations of his life.
"Hello old friend."
A few hours later at dawn, Hiro finally knew what he had to do. He called Admiral Lucas. The Admiral picked up the phone on the first ring. He knew from experience that calls in the early morning hours were almost always important, and generally portended bad news.
"This better be good Mifune," said in a grumpy voice.
"We've got a problem Lucas."
"Well it better be big enough to affect the whole damn galaxy to get me up this early Mifune," he said sarcastically. When Hiro didn't answer immediately he continued. "Can a year go by without you trying your best to ruin my life Mifune? Get your ass over here now."
"Your office Lucas. This needs to be secure."
"That bad huh?"
"'Fraid so Admiral."
"Oh Admiral is it? You know you just used up what little juice you have in the next life don't you? My office, one hour."
Hiro thought he heard Lucas grumble about troublesome ass kissing young officers as he signed off. Hiro smiled, Lucas was the best commanding officer he had ever known, precisely because he made it a point to always take seriously what his junior officers had to say to him.
Exactly one hour later Hiro was waiting as Admiral Lucas strode into his office with a scowl on his face. His uniform was immaculate, not a crease out of place, as if he'd had it starched and pressed special just to meet with Hiro that day. The Admiral felt it important to set a good example, even for impromptu early morning fate of the galaxy meetings.
"Good morning Ad…" Hiro stared to say.
"Save it Mifune! You better not be jerking me around. I was looking forward to sleeping in this morning."
Hiro knew the gruff tone was a sham to cow his subordinate officers and, truth be told, it worked pretty well with almost everyone. If Hiro didn't have a close friend who knew the Admiral's housekeeper, he would have been shaking in his boots as well. As it was, he knew that Lucas was a workaholic who rose early every day and put in ungodly hours at his job for Starfleet.
"Admiral…" Admiral Lucas held his hand up to stop him.
"Computer."
"Working."
"Secure the room."
"Room secured," an energetic but monotone voice rang back.
He looked at Hiro expectantly. Hiro figured the information was too important to beat around the bush.
"I'm pretty sure I know where to find the Tantalus device."
The Admiral paused. Looking directly at Hiro he said without emotion. "You used the temporary access I gave you to the archive to snoop around into Kirk's old missions."
It was a statement, not a question. Admiral Lucas was also the most intelligent person Hiro had ever met. There were not many subjects the man didn't have a working knowledge of, and he had the ability to assess a situation with a speed bordering on the savant. The smart money had him heading up Starfleet within the next three years.
He continued. "How sure?"
"Ninety percent," Hiro said with a stern confidence.
Admiral Brown paused again, weighing the implications. The only sign of emotion on the Admiral's face was a slight rising of his eyebrows. Scuttlebutt had it that he acquired the habit from the legendary Commander Spock, with whom he was acquainted personally.
"Run me through the numbers."
After an hour when Lucas barely spoke, Hiro finally summed everything up. Admiral Brown spent a whole minute looking out his window at the San Francisco skyline. Hiro kept quiet, waiting for the Admiral to finish processing what had just been dropped into his lap.
"I've got to run this up the flagpole Hiro. Yet again you've handed me a mess! This is going to seriously get the bees a buzzing with the higher ups."
"Of course Admiral. Shall I prepare a ship to Beta Virginis?"
"Don't you think you're getting ahead of yourself Hiro? How do you know we're going to send a ship," he objected.
"My apologies Admiral. What are my orders?"
"I'll have the DeGrasse Tyson and the Kepler recalled. They should be back here in a little over a week. Have them fitted out to your specs. I need you out of here at maximum warp within three weeks after that. I'll have the paperwork chopped before you're out of the building. This has got to be kept low key. As far as everyone concerned, this is an archaeological mission to study the ruins on the planet. In fact, grab some people to study that nebula as well, and make it a scientific mission to study the whole system. That should throw any interested parties off the scent."
Two ships. They were only scientific vessels, but that was ok. It was more than he thought he'd need, but was still manageable. He'd get his son to helm the other one. Three weeks was going to be tight – he needed the right people on this mission, but Hiro would just have to make it happen.
Lucas had a big stinking mess on his plate and Hiro did not envy the endless meetings he was going to have to endure in the next few weeks to get all of the bureaucrats to agree to something that everyone should know immediately had to be done. Hiro got up to go.
"And Hiro, don't screw this up."
Lucas had made up his mind; the gruffness was back.
"Of course not Admiral."
"There you go with the "Admiral" again. Get the hell out of my office Mifune!"
