A Disquiet Follows my Soul

Chapter 3

Kirk lay down, his eyes still shut against the world, against the bright light that was trying to nearly blind him. A distant noise stirred him. Rolling over, he finally opened his eyes, and looked around.

He was in a white room, with ambient light flooding in from everywhere. There were no visible light fixtures, and nothing save Q, who was standing in the middle of the room. Smiling down at Kirk, he lifted his hand, and Kirk felt invisible hands lift him up into standing position. Getting back on his feet, he stood there, stoically watching Q with a mixed expression of fear and suppressed anger. Both stood there for a second, not saying anything. Kirk was the first to break the silence.

"What do you want from me?" Kirk asked, which drew a smile onto Q's face.

"Quite simple, Captain. We're here to see whether humanity is worthy of living," Q said. Kirk said nothing. Impulsively reaching for his phaser, he noticed it wasn't there. Oh, yeah, Kirk thought. He took it.

Q nodded again, having quickly checked over Kirk's thoughts. "Yes, Captain. If you remember correctly, I took your phaser. You won't get another until the situation arises. Now, we've tarried far too long. The first task is at hand. Are you ready, Captain?" Q asked. Kirk mentally braced himself.

"What about my crew?" Kirk asked. "Are they alright?"

"Oh, they're fantastic. They haven't come to harm at all, even when the Klingons attacked your ship. I simply threw the Klingons a couple dozen light years. No problem. Now, onto the first task!" Q said, as Kirk suddenly felt extremely dizzy, and collapsed, unconscious.


Kirk woke up in his quarters. Looking around, he sighed with relief, seeing that Q wasn't there. Q's next words dispelled that notion.

"Do not think you've escaped my eye, Captain. I'm always watching. Oh," Q said. "Someone's about to enter your room."

Kirk had barely enough time to put on a uniform before Spock entered. Kirk sighed.

"Spock, could you please refrain from barging into my room randomly?" Sock gave Kirk a quizzical look.

"Forgive me if I had offended you in any way, Captain, but urgent matters beg to be prioritized." Kirk now gave Spock a quizzical look.

"What is it?" Kirk asked, to which Spock raised an eyebrow.

"Starbase K-13 has disappeared."


Kirk nearly tripped and fell as he slipped on a pair of pants he had left on the ground.

"Starbase K-13? Gone?" Kirk said, with a large dose of disbelief, but dreading the truth of the matter.

"It disappeared off our star charts at approximately 2300 hours, merely 8 hours, 17 minutes, and 32 seconds ago. There has been no distress beacon, nor any communications from the station," Spock elaborated. Kirk shook his head.

"So we're going to go there, and find out what made it disappear." Spock nodded.

"Precisely."


Kirk walked onto the bridge, and noticed a couple minor differences. They were minor enough not to draw too much attention to, but were noticeable, nonetheless. He checked his own uniform. The color was slightly lighter, ever so slightly, and the high collar was now lower on his neck, decreasing his discomfort with his previous uniform. The Bridge was also slightly different, Kirk noticed. The consoles were sleeker, and the lighting was a little lighter than he was used to, on the Enterprise-A. Then again, Kirk thought, This is the Enterprise-A. Albeit slightly different.

He also noticed that Chekov wasn't there at his usual console. Did he get transferred, Kirk mentally asked himself. Or did something happen to him? I'll check the ship computers later.

"Alright. Lieutenant, set a course for the last confirmed location of Starbase K-13. Maximum Warp."

"Yes, Sir." He didn't say anything for a few seconds. "Course laid in, Sir."

Kirk nodded. "Punch it," he said to Mr. Sulu, who nodded, and activated the warp drive, as the Enterprise's nacelles, glowed brightly. The ship stretched to absurd lengths, the nacelles glowing even brighter, then warped away, the nacelles leaving dainty streamers of sky blue crystals.


The Enterprise sailed through subspace, traveling several hundred times the speed of light. Kirk looked at the viewscreen, and looked at the stars as they sped rapidly by as if they were fleeting fireflies. He remembered something he had wanted to ask.

"Lieutenant, what's your name?" Kirk asked, gesturing towards the man at the navigation console. The man turned around, and, with a lopsided grin, replied,

"Lieutenant Gary Mitchell."


Several hours later, the Enterprise dropped out of warp. With a violent deceleration, the Enterprise slowed from warp, into sublight speed, to hover in the far outer orbit of a large gas giant.

"We've dropped out of warp, Captain," Mitchell reported. Kirk nodded, and ordered,

"Onscreen."

Mr. Sulu nodded, then quickly put what the optical cameras on the ship saw onto the viewscreen.

The starbase wasn't there.


Kirk shook his head.

"Where is it?" Kirk asked. Spock merely shrugged, something he picked up from being on shore leave on Earth for several months.

"Uncertain, Captain. There is no indication of any combat of an sort, though there is some scattered hull plating, and an unusual amount of tachyons around the planet's ring systems," Spock said.

"Captain, the tachyon emissions have spiked, and we've lost power on deck 21," Mr. Scott reported. "I don't even have anything to check tachyon emissions, but they've gotten so high, they're registering on literally every sensor the ship has! Even the optical!"

Kirk's eyes widened. Even he knew that tachyon emissions popping up on optical sensors wasn't normal. It was abnormal. And that last time something was abnormal, the ship was destroyed…

"Mr. Sulu, hard port turn, plane down 45 degrees, and get us out of here. Maximum Warp," Kirk ordered. Mr. Sulu nodded, then started putting in commands, telling the computer to do exactly what Kirk wanted the ship to do. Spock shook his head.

"Captain, the tachyon emissions prevent our ship from achieving warp factors about Warp Factor 2, and if we do decide to go to warp, the subspace bubble will interact with the space around us in a way as to create a subspace tear, and pull us in," Spock deliberated. Kirk shook his head.

"We'll never get anywhere at impulse, and we'll be stuck here otherwise." Kirk sighed. "We'll try impulse, though. Mr. Sulu, belay that order, and proceed at full impulse speed."

Mr. Sulu nodded, and canceled the last command he put in, and replaced it with the new one. The ship powered down its warp nacelles, and diverted power towards the impulse engines. Suddenly, things took a turn for the worse.

"Captain, the impulse engines are working, but we're being pulled backwards!" Mr. Sulu said. Kirk was surprised, and worried as the ship shook and the noise of shattering glass permeated the air.

"Captain, the impulse engines have agitated the tachyons so that they have created a subspace tear." Kirk was interrupted abruptly by Mr. Scott.

"Captain, the impulse engines are being fried! You have to cut the power to them, or else they'll detonate, and take the ship with it!" Mr. Scott yelled, as he ran across the deck where the impulse engines were mounted. As the ship shook, he was thrown violently through the air, to land on one of the fusion reactors, which were suspended several feet off the ground. After shaking off the dizziness, he jumped to the ground, spraining his ankle in the process. A reactor exploded nearby, sending glowing plasma and metal shrapnel everywhere, gutting and melting several crewmen, who cried out in agony and terror. Mr. Scott looked at the dead and dying crewmen, then limped over to the override controls and manually cut power to the reactors.


"Captain, the impulse engines have shut down, and power to Main Engineering just cut off," Mr. Sulu said. Mitchell was still trying to help in any way he could. He was setting new coordinates in case warp was reactivated, trying to cold-restart the impulse engines, and also trying to stop the inexorable rampage of power outages and failures happening throughout the ship. That was not to be.

As he was trying to bring auxiliary power back on on Deck 6, the ship shook violently, much more than the last several times. Mitchell had barely enough time to scream before the console in front of him exploded in a loud report, showering sparks and molten metal everywhere, and throwing him out of his seat, and onto the ground, where he lay, unconscious.

Kirk got out of his chair to check on Mitchell, but right then the ship shook even harder, and threw him off balance, and he hit his head on the edge on a console, knocking him out as the ship finally lost all power and fell into the subspace tear, and into the unknown.