Free Star Trek: The Original Series - 162 - Shadow of the Machine by Scott Harrison Page B

to the point of distraction whenever he was in the mood,” Kirk continued. “Sometimes it made me feel like the loneliest person in the world. Silly, isn’t it? Here I was, surrounded by family, animals, and friends, and yet there were times when it was almost as if there was no one that I could talk to, no one who could understand me, understand who I was, what I wanted to be.”
    “But you grew up and became a famous admiral in Starfleet,” Peter said, still not looking up.
    “And you’d think it would all suddenly change, wouldn’t you? That suddenly everyone magically understood you, and all that loneliness and insecurity would just melt away, faster than ice in the desert.” Kirk held his arms out, indicating the barn around him. “And yet here I am, seeking sanctuary in this old barn as I once did, hiding away from my friends and colleagues, and talking to horses. So much for the famous Starfleet admiral.”
    “But you saved us all, didn’t you?” Peter asked. “You saved Earth from destruction by V’Ger.”
    “But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a price to pay,” Kirk said sadly. “Trust me, there usually is in situations like that.”
    “You mean Commander Decker and Lieutenant Ilia?” Peter asked.
    “Yes,” Kirk said. “But I began paying the price long before V’Ger.”
    Now he had Peter’s full attention. Slowly, the boy lowered the grooming brush in his hand, the horse’s coat all but forgotten.
    “Were you scared?”
    The question came completely out of the blue, catching Kirk off-guard. He turned away from the white-and-gray mare, looking across at his nephew.
    “Scared?”
    “When V’Ger came,” Peter explained. “Yours was the only ship Command sent to intercept it. There was no one else, just the Enterprise . You must have been scared.”
    Just for a second, Kirk was back on the bridge of the Enterprise , his hands raised in front of his face, the light and heat from the V’Ger probe almost unbearable as it slowly twists and swirls around the bridge crew like a mini-tornado, searching, probing, learning. The probe tries to drain the computer banks, ripping out every file, every technical schematic and Starfleet communiqué it can find. Spock steps forward and smashes the station, effectively starving the probe of knowledge.
    Then it turns, spinning and gyrating its way across the bridge to Ilia at the navigation station. It reaches out a tentative tongue of energy, tasting the biological makeup of the carbon-based life-form in front of it. Frightened, the Deltan turns and tries to run, but the probe reaches out again, freezing her in her tracks. It has decided that it needs her, that V’Ger needs the creature’s knowledge, its likeness.
    The probe begins to pulse sickeningly. There is a blinding flash of light.
    Kirk blinked several times, in a desperate attempt to dislodge the image from his mind’s eye. He looked at his nephew. “Yes, I was scared.”
    “That you were going to die?” Peter asked.
    “No. Scared that my crew might die if I did the wrong thing, gave the wrong order,” Kirk told him. “I knew the Enterprise was all that stood in V’Ger’s way. Everyone was depending on me to do the right thing. That was infinitely more terrifying than facing your own mortality.”
    “I couldn’t do that. That’s what Uncle Abner doesn’t understand. He thinks I’ve lost interest, that I’ve no ambition, but he’s wrong. I want to do these things, I really do, I’m just . . .” Peter stopped.
    Kirk finished the sentence for him. “Scared?”
    “Before Deneva, before my parents were killed, I used to see everything as an exciting adventure—all those other worlds, those other life-forms and civilizations. My father used to say that there are as many new worlds with new, undiscovered life walking on their surfaces as there are grains of sand on the beach. I used to find that the most exciting thing ever. But now it just frightens me. They frighten