The connection snatched him up from amongst the shards, and he awoke on the foam pad in the control room.

"Pilot. Are you well?"

He blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light of the core control room. Oureka was kneeling next to him. "Yeah. I think so." He took a breath and let it out slowly. "Thanks for getting me out of there." He saw Tracy slide out of her seat and grab something; soon she was scanning him from a tricorder.

"How about we not tell Dr. McCoy about that," he said, and she snorted.

"No deal, Captain."

Carol spoke from her seat at the command console. "You're welcome, Captain, but we're almost back to square one. We've lost a good deal of ground."

He looked at Oureka. "How are you doing on robots?"

"We have obtained a half-dozen more with the aid of the Inhabitants."

"Okay. I have an idea. The connection might look a little weird in a second."

Gaila narrowed her eyes at him. "Captain, what exactly are you planning?"

Jim sat back up against the wall. "I'm going to make sure the AI can't pull a stunt like that again. And then I'm going to kick its ass." He took another breath to steady himself and let the connection pull him back under.


No sooner had the system closed up around him than the Inhabitants and the Pilots were checking him over nervously; he assured them he was fine, and they settled back to their tasks. Most of the Inhabitants were working with Scotty and Oureka to disable the robot sub-AIs, while the Pilots and the remaining Inhabitants were assisting Gaila and Carol with the AI's security subsystems. That left him at somewhat loose ends, which gave him time to think.

Their current efforts were, overall, a losing strategy. The central AI knew that it had only to cut him out of the connection again to regain control. Worse, it had suggested it was working on a way to convert him, which was a worst-case scenario if ever there was one, because if it could convert him, it could convert the Pilots.

Gaila and the Pilots had already shored up the holes in the protocol which the AI had exploited, but there would be others, and the station's grid had enough computing power to find them in short order. They couldn't rely on keeping ahead of, or even just pace with, the AI. To prevent it from happening again, they needed to be more than just two entities with one connecting them; they needed to be one entity made of three seamless parts, so any one would always have the other two protecting its vulnerabilities.

Well, if anyone knew anything about integrating disparate beings, it was him, though the first time had been by feel and on accident and out of necessity. Intentional, reversible integration was a whole different ballgame. Of course, the chaotic maelstrom of the station's hostile computer grid was the very definition of necessity, and he had always used instinct to survive his most difficult trials. Jim Kirk was nothing if not about finding his own way. If it wouldn't be accidental this time, well, maybe that was a good thing for all of them.

He thought he could feel the AI clawing at them, looking for new ways in. Carol and Gaila's hastily-compiled security system was doing an amazing job of fending it off for all that they'd pitted it against the most advanced software system in probably the entire galaxy.

He gripped both ends of the connection to get the Pilots' and Inhabitants' attention. He told them they had to do this differently. They agreed, because they were concerned about pushing any advantages again, only to lose him once more, maybe for good.

He laid out his idea. He thought he understood how he'd managed integration before, and how to make it non-permanent for this instance, and the advantages it had.

They were, he was unsurprised to find, nervous and unsure. A lack of permanence didn't mean a lack of fundamental change, and who knew what would happen to them. The Inhabitants had been fighting to be free for so long, it looked like yet another play for control, and the Pilots were concerned of the effect it would have on them.

That reaction was familiar territory, though; in fact, it was the beginning he needed.

He took their fear and offered his resolve to all of them in its place.


"What's going on?" Carol asked as her panel flickered, distorted, and re-resolved. Gaila swept at hers, which had frozen.

"Maybe this is what he meant. Dr. Tracy? Is he alright?"

Tracy was tapping at her tablet here and there. She gave Carol and Gaila a worried look, then crouched down next to Jim.

"Captain."

Without opening his eyes he said, "Give us a second."

Something in his voice made Carol's skin crawl. Next to her, Gaila asked, "Us?"

The core control panel went red and black, warnings and demands flashing over it. Gaila dug through the modules, trying to get their access back; Carol joined her after a second. Tracy kept watching the captain.

Carol glanced over her shoulder and saw him smile in that smug way he reserved for whenever he was about to win.


The integration varied the way an electron's presence at any point in its orbit did. Sometimes he was Jim Kirk, and sometimes he was the joined entity they'd made for this unique purpose. If he needed to be Jim, he could be, though it was a tenuous distinction at best, and he seldom stayed himself for very long.

Most of their attention was diverted to building the connection properly, and when they emerged from that it was to find the AI had been busy removing the access they'd worked so hard to obtain. Gaila and Carol were already on it, and with more direct access to the Inhabitants, the Pilots found it easier to assist in re-establishing their access.

The AI's probes for new loopholes were fruitless. Each time it was on to something, they shut it out. Carol and Gaila helped clear the way for them. The security measures fell, one at a time, and as they gained control of more of the grid the AI lost more of its power. It made several attempts to sabotage the life support systems; all of them failed. It tried to reprogram Oureka and Scotty's re-purposed robots and found it could not.

They gained access to the central processing cluster of the facility, and were face to face with the AI in short order. It wasn't the sort of thing which could be afraid, or so they thought, but it acted out of desperation to continue on as it was programmed, to survive.

They were nothing, it told them. They were all experiments: the Pilots were bred and born to serve the whims of others, the station's research subjects served no purpose beyond the AI's own intentions, and he had been used again and again as the means to some ends far beyond his own understanding. They were nothing, they had no purpose.

Any fear they harbored that the AI was right burned away in the fury that chased on its heels. (He wondered how much of that fury was his own.) Whether they'd been made to serve someone else's purpose or not, right now, they served their own.

They reached into the heart of the system matrix, took hold of the entity there, and tore it out.


Every display in the room froze, then went black. The computing cluster's lights began to blink in a steadily spreading pattern that, once it had reached all of them, halted. No one spoke; they just watched the captain, waiting for some kind of sign.

Scott burst in from the hallway. "What the hell just happened?"


The grid seized. They discarded the AI, and it began to degrade, modules and subunits unraveling. They reached down and placed themselves where the AI had been, and the facility systems latched onto them as the new heart. It didn't care what they were, so long as they were self and the interface was correct, and thanks to the Inhabitants and Gaila and Carol's tireless work, both of these things were true.

Their connection trickled out into the myriad reaches of the structure, and he could feel every ache and pain and complaint of the station as the star's evolution twisted and pulled, manipulating the facility in ways that had never been intended. He thought he could even feel the neutron star itself, its surface strained close to a breaking point by its own nature.

Their first act was to reprogram the sub-AIs, which they did with a simple wave of demand. As the results spread throughout the facility they watched through the cameras and witnessed the amazement of the unconnected Inhabitants as their captors released them and became docile, helpful, even protective. The Praxidi landing party walked further into the facility, past inert robot drones that were still repurposing, while Tracy, Oureka, Carol and Gaila called out updates from their newly rebooted consoles to Scotty. Everyone was uninjured, which eased his concerns.

They moved on to more pressing matters. They had been right: the facility was capable of movement. The stellar fragment that powered it didn't behave like a warp core, though; instead, it manipulated magnetic and gravitational fields. The structure's motion wouldn't be like the propulsion a ship used.

They poured through the information needed to achieve a safer orbit. The hows and whys were staggering, and together they learned how to tell the structure where to go and how to safely go there. The core would be doing most of the work, they just had to tell it what to do. Much easier than he'd expected, and a welcome respite given how difficult it had been to get to this point.

They warned everyone on board first, though it wouldn't effect them much. The core had more than enough power to keep the shields and stabilizers at maximum. The combined chorus of his and the Pilots' voices was more than a little eerie as it rang through the halls. "Prepare for facility translocation."

Jim had just enough of a sense of self to give a more personalized message. He struggled back to the surface of his own consciousness. Opening his eyes felt like it took years. "Scotty."

Scotty leaned down to look at him. "Captain. I take it all this means you got it sorted?"

"We did. We're moving the station." He saw Oureka, Tracy. Carol, and Gaila out of the corner of his eye; though they were busy, Gaila's one glance towards him held a great deal of relief. "It should be a smooth ride."

"Should be?"

"No promises. Maybe hold onto something." He let his eyes close, and the system swallowed him up like a hungry tide.

The part of them that was the Inhabitants held the facility, their awareness seeping into every corner and preparing it for the move. The part that was the Pilots built their path and destination, mapping the new orbit and their trajectory to it in the finest possible detail.

That left one thing for him. He took hold of the stellar core; it spun so fast that its pulse was like the thrum of a hummingbird's wings against his mind. He felt the edges of its magnetic fields where they pushed against the magnetar's; the star seemed to stir, restless as it dreamed of becoming.

The knowledge of the core's use solidified around him, pulled in from the deepest corners of the grid that had remained hidden to even the AI. Only the creators were allowed here, and as their descendants that was the Inhabitants, and through his connection to them the grid showed him how to command it. With a touch the tiny star knew what was needed, and tightened in on itself, increasing its rotational speed a thousand-fold.

They brought all three components together and joined their purpose with a single word.

Now.