Crucible: Kirk Read Online Free

a minute. He surveyed the ragged terrain, strewn with rocks and boulders, cut with fissures and grooves. When he saw and heard nothing, he prepared to move, to try to find Picard or this Soran of whom the captain had spoken. But then a hand appeared on the edge of a crevice that ran across the landscape in front of Kirk. He stepped up to it and peered down to see Picard climbing upward. They made eye contact, and Kirk lowered himself to his knees and helped the captain up.
    â€œI take it that was Soran firing at you,” Kirk said.
    â€œIt was,” Picard confirmed. “He’s got that handheld weapon, but he’s alone here. If we go at him from two sides, one of us should be able to stop him.” As Picard gazed in the direction from which the energy fire had come, he explained that Soran had briefly experienced the nexus himself eighty years ago, aboard one of the very transports that the skeleton crew of the Excelsior -class Enterprise had endeavored to save. Prior to that, Soran had lost his entire family in an unprovoked attack by a brutal alien species, and apparently the nexus had allowed him to overcome the pain of that terrible loss, at least while he’d been within it. Having been swallowed up himself by the timeless other-space and subjected to its effects, Kirk found that eminently understandable.
    According to Picard, after Soran had been beamed from the transport, and consequently from the nexus, he had then spent the ensuing decades searching for a safe means of reentering it. The energy ribbon, which made a circuit through the galaxy every thirty-nine years, functioned as a doorway into the nexus. Soran had developed a scheme to reroute the path of the ribbon so that it would intersect the surface of a world—this world, Veridian Three. In order to accomplish that, he had deployed a trilithium weapon of his own design to collapse a star, Amargosa, thereby affecting the gravity in this sector. Now, he intended to do the same thing to this system’s star. After Soran had then made it back into the nexus, the shock wave resulting from the destruction of Veridian would tear apart each of its six planets, including the fourth, home to a preindustrial society numbering two hundred thirty million.
    â€œSoran has covered these crags with a complex of platforms, bridges, and ladders,” Picard said. “It appears that he’ll launch his trilithium missile, then make his way to the highest platform to wait for the ribbon to sweep him up into the nexus.”
    â€œHow much time have we got?” Kirk asked.
    â€œMinutes only,” Picard said.
    â€œThen let’s go.”

    Kirk threw his closed fist through the scaffolding, catching Soran on the side of his face. The white-haired man fell backward and off the top of the rocks, fifty meters or more above the ground. Kirk heard him grunt once, but Soran did not scream.
    As quickly as he could, Kirk extricated himself from the web of metal bars that held up the platform at the apex of the rock formation. As he did, he saw Picard clambering back up from where he’d tumbled during their hand-to-hand struggle with Soran. “I thought you were going for the launcher,” Kirk said to him. In fact, by returning when he had, Picard had prevented Kirk’s death at the emitter end of Soran’s handheld energy weapon.
    â€œI changed my mind,” Picard said. “Captain’s prerogative.” Together, they started back down from the summit, heading for the trilithium missile that sat poised to take flight. As they reached that level and approached the launcher, though, Kirk heard a low whooshing sound from ahead, and he looked over to see the bronze missile fade into nothingness, obviously cloaking. More important, the launcher and its control panel also vanished.
    Suddenly, Kirk heard another noise, above and to his left. He peered over and saw Soran falling down the side of the cliff face at the end of a