—the bridge dissolved into warm afternoon sunshine. Kirk squinted through the unexpected brightness and saw that he was... home.
It wasn't home. It couldn't be home. But it looked like any of the farms Kirk had known growing up in Iowa—one of the old-fashioned kind, where they kept horses and shunned food synthesizers and there was always a swing or a rocking chair on the front porch.
Sure enough, there were horses, big glossy-coated draft horses grazing in a small pasture bordered on one side by the cornfield Kirk had materialized in. He walked through the cornrows, the stalks rattling seductively in his hands. It was late summer, almost fall, and the stalks were dry and brown, the ears long since harvested. It wasn't home, it couldn't be home, but the feel of the papery leaves and the sound of the breeze hissing through the rows was so evocative of comfort and safety that he wanted, just for a moment, to believe it was real.
Kirk pushed aside the wave of homesickness with the last of the corn stalks and walked past the unconcerned horses. On the far side of the pasture was a hedgerow, and beyond that a handsome old farmhouse, exactly the kind he would have imagined for a farm like this. He saw others coming out of the cornfield, or emerging from the thick band of trees that bordered the east side of the pasture: familiar faces from the Enterprise, and unfamiliar ones wearing the black uniforms of the Vengenace. Kirk spotted Sh'athylnik among the latter, wearing the same expression of confusion everyone else wore.
A grandmotherly sort of woman carrying a tray came out of the farmhouse. "Come up here!" she called. "Come on now! I have a pitcher of lemonade and some sugar cookies."
Not quite Ohio. The woman's accent was Southern, not Midwestern, and there was no swing on the porch, only wicker chairs with lots of cushions. Bones, Kirk thought wryly, would feel right at home.
As though the thought had summoned him, Kirk spotted McCoy kneeling on the close-clipped lawn that surrounded the farmhouse. A small cluster of people stood around him, including Khan. Kirk hurried toward them.
Spock appeared, apparently from thin air, and matched his stride. Kirk saw he had procured a tricorder from somewhere and was scanning their surroundings. "What do you make of this, Mr. Spock?" Kirk asked him.
"We've only transported one hundred kilometers, captain. We're inside the array."
"Then what's this?" Kirk waved a hand at the sunshine, the farmhouse, the horses.
"There's no indication of stable matter. This must be some kind of holographic projection."
Kirk could feel the warmth of the sun across his shoulders and smell the earthy scent of horse manure. If this was a hologram, it was light-years beyond anything the Federation had. Of course, so was the ability to move two starships across the galaxy.
Reaching the edge of the small crowd, Kirk pushed past a yeoman and an ensign to reach McCoy's side. The doctor knelt next to a young woman who lay motionless on the grass, scanning her with a medical tricorder. At first Kirk thought he didn't know her. Instead of either style of Starfleet uniform, she wore an attractively snug crimson coverall belted at the waist. Her short black hair jogged Kirk's memory: she was the woman from the open cryopod he had seen in sickbay. Khan stood at the woman's feet, his expression raw, taut.
"Who is she?" Kirk asked.
Khan lifted his eyes from the woman's unmoving body. The wound over his eye was already healed, the blood washed away. "Her name is Kati," he said softly.
Kirk looked away first. "What's wrong with her, Bones?"
McCoy grimaced in frustration. "She's coming out of stasis. Or rather, she should be coming out of stasis. But without the life-support functions of the cryopod, the thawing process is killing her."
"Is there anything you can do?"
"If I had a biobed? And my instruments? Hell, yes! Here..."
The grandmotherly woman bounced across the lawn to them, still carrying her tray. "Oh, you poor things, you must be tired out," she cooed. "Come on and sit down and rest a while, have a cold drink, hmmm?" She beckoned them toward the house.
"No, thank you, ma'am," Kirk said firmly. "My name is James Kirk, captain of the Federation starship Enterprise. This woman is in need of medical attention—"
"Now just make yourselves right at home," the woman said, waving her hand airily. "The neighbors should be here any minute."
Khan stepped past Kirk and seized her arm. He twisted it cruelly, and the woman gasped in pain, the tray tumbling to the ground. Cookies spilled across the grass. "Whatever game you are playing, end it now," he snarled. "Return us to the Enterprise immediately."
"Khan!" Kirk protested. He grabbed the augment's arm and tried to pull him away from the woman. It felt like trying to move a boulder.
"Oh," the woman whimpered. "Why here they are." She flapped her free hand over Khan's shoulder in greeting.
Kirk glanced behind him and saw a group of people, dressed to match the house and the horses, spill onto the lawn. They were relaxed and smiling. A pretty young woman walked arm-in-arm with an old man carrying a banjo; another woman had a wicker basket of food. They seemed not to notice Khan abusing their hostess.
"Khan," Kirk repeated, pulling harder. This time he felt Khan's body give a little. "Let her go. She's a just a hologram, she's not real."
Khan's grip tightened on the woman's arm until his knuckles turned white. She gave another squawk of pain and said, her voice only a little strained, "Lawdy, but you're strong, young man!"
Then the newcomers were upon them, slipping among the crew and greeting them like old friends. The old man with the banjo shook Spock's hand and, oblivious to the mildly perplexed look on the Vulcan's face, said, "Good to see you, welcome!" The young woman who had accompanied him wrapped her hands around Khan's other arm and said in a warm, suggestive voice, "We're real glad you dropped by."
Khan stepped away from both women, looking furious.
The older woman, freed from Khan's grip, raised her hands above her head. "Now we can get started!" she cried happily. "You're all invited to the welcoming bee!"
The old man sat down on the porch steps. "Let's have some music!" he cried. He began strumming his banjo, and the holographic people whooped and laughed and began to dance around Kirk, Khan, and the woman dying on the ground.