Free Star Trek: The Original Series - 082 - Federation by Judith Reeves-Stevens, Garfield Reeves-Stevens

said about Nancy Hedford’s fate, to her family and the Federation.
    Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had spent several long nights in McCoy’s quarters, debating the possibilities, and the extent of their duty to Starfleet and to history. Between Spock’s unassail-able logic and McCoy’s unalloyed passion, it was Kirk who had come up with a compromise which was acceptable to all and that still respected Cochrane’s wish.
    Kirk stood before the door to Conference Room Eight. Like all compromises, he had known that the course of action he had taken after returning from Cochrane’s planetoid exposed him to some risk. He just hadn’t thought he would be exposed this quickly, or at such a high level.
    He stepped forward. The doors parted before him. Admiral Quarlo Kabreigny sat at the end of the long table, a cup of coffee beside her. She was a thin woman, her dark skin deeply lined after a lifetime of service, her snow-white hair drawn back tightly into a coiled bun, her admiral’s uniform loose on her spare frame.
    ‘Tin sorry to have kept you waiting, Admiral,” Kirk began diffidently.
    But the admiral was in no mood for pleasantries or politeness.
    She told Kirk to sit down and pay attention. Then she slid a data wafer into a player at her side. The table’s central viewer came to liffe. It displayed a passenger liner with three warp nacelles, an ungainly design that provided a much smaller increase in speed than the math suggested it would. Twin nacelles was still the most e~cient design for warp travel.
    ‘The Cio’ of Utopia Planilia, “Kabreigny stated, identifying the liner. “Mars registry. Crew complement of fifteen. Passenger manifest as of stardate 3825.2: eighty-seven.” The viewer flickered to show a Fleet chart of the Gamma Canaris region. A solid line indicated the liner’s course. It ended midscreen.
    It had happened before, Kirk thought. It could happen again.
    He tried to get straight to the point. “Admiral, I think there’s a possibility the liner was not destroyed.” Kabreigny’s smile was cold. “Oh, you do, do you? Are you going to tell me it was drawn off course, the way your shuttlecraft was six months ago?” “A possibility,” Kirk said, hearing the controlled anger in the admiral’s words.
    “Are you further going to report that you encountered a threat to navigation and neglected to include it in your logs, putting civilian shipping in harm’s way?” Kirk realized he would have to move carefully. Kabreigny was not the type of officer of whom it was wise to make an enemy. “As my log recorded, I believe we hit a random energy field that affected the Galileo’s guidance controls. I had absolutely no indication that it was a repeatable phenomenon.” Why should it be? Kirk thought. The Companion had provided company for Cochrane. Now she was content with him and he with her.
    Besides, what reason would she have to go after an entire liner?
    And she had said she no longer had the power to control spacecraft.
    “Let me put it this way, Kirk, in simple language I think even you will understand: I don’t believe you.” Coming from an admiral, that was a serious charge. Kirk placed his hands on the table. He had given his word to Cochrane. He would not betray that. But he had no idea how he could escape the admiral’s accusation.
    “May I ask the admiral why?” Kirk said evenly.
    “The liner hasn’t vanished completely. One week ago, while I was in transit, we picked up an emergency subspace transmission from the liner’s last known general location. Unfortunately, we couldn’t lock on to its origin point, but there’s nothing else in the region that could be transmitting.” The admiral touched a control on the player. The viewer changed again. This time it showed a frozen, blurry image of a woman, human, her dark hair in disarray, her skin smudged with what looked like dirt or blood.
    But still the face was recognizable. The woman was Nancy Hedford.
    Recognize her?”