Crucible: Kirk Read Online Free Page A

rope, which he’d evidently grabbed hold of when he’d fallen. Now, he slid down fifteen meters, then jerked to a stop. A small object flew from his hands, clattered along the rocks, and landed atop one of the metal bridges constructed here.
    â€œWe need that control pad,” Picard said, clearly concluding that Soran had used it to cloak the missile. They started for the device at once, Kirk in the lead. As he reached the bridge, though, Picard said, “Captain, look!” Kirk glanced up and immediately saw the source of Picard’s concern. “Where’s Soran?” Against the sheer rock face, the rope now hung empty. Either Soran had fallen or he’d found his way to safety.
    It didn’t matter. With time running out, they had little choice in how to proceed. Kirk turned and pointed back toward the location of the missile. Picard nodded and started for it, while Kirk hurried across the bridge toward the control pad.
    Suddenly a pulse of green light flashed from below. It passed beneath the bridge, and Kirk turned to see it strike the rocks behind him, creating a momentary fireball. Before he could do anything, Soran corrected his aim and sent a pair of energy bursts slamming into the center of the bridge in front of Kirk. He felt the blasts as they rent the metal structure in two. Kirk reached for a pole at the side of the bridge, wrapping one arm around it as the surface beneath his feet fell. Both ends of the bridge remained attached to the rocks, though, depending from them at steep angles.
    Expecting another blast from Soran’s energy weapon at any moment, Kirk didn’t wait, but began pulling himself up along the chains that hung between the poles at the sides of the bridge. As he did so, he saw Picard rushing back down from the missile platform, obviously to help him. Kirk pulled his knees in and used his feet to push himself upward from one of the poles. Above, he saw Picard positioning himself at the end of the bridge and preparing to reach down to him. Kirk took hold of the upper chain with his left hand and maneuvered himself onto his back, then reached his right hand up toward Picard.
    Only centimeters separated their fingertips, but it might as well have been parsecs. Kirk strained, as did Picard, and the gap narrowed, but not enough. At the same time, he felt his hold on the chain slipping.
    A terrifying instant later his hand came completely free. Kirk began sliding down the bridge. “No!” he yelled, elongating the word as he descended toward a fall that would likely kill him.
    But then Picard’s hand slapped down hard atop his wrist, the captain’s fingers closing around it in a strong grip. Kirk reached again for one of the chains, found it, and began hauling himself up again. With Picard’s help, this time he made it.
    The two captains dropped onto the rocks at the end of the bridge, Picard no doubt as hot and exhausted as Kirk. The twenty-fourth-century captain peered down to the location from where Soran had fired his weapon, and then up at the sky. Kirk followed his gaze and saw a whirling, weaving band of fiery energy he remembered well from the main viewscreen on the bridge of the Enterprise -B. He’d also seen it up close, when it had torn through the outer bulkhead of the deflector control room. Kirk had been ascending a ladder when he’d been blown out into space amid a coruscation of brilliant light. As though through a fog, he’d seen for just a moment the massive form of the Enterprise above him, and beyond it, the pinpoints of the brightest stars, Sol among them.
    And then he’d been with Edith on Earth in 1930. And with Gary on Delta Vega, with Sam on Deneva, with David on Regula, with Spock down in main engineering. He’d prevented Governor Kodos from giving the order to execute four thousand colonists on Tarsus IV, had avoided contracting the rapid-aging disease on Miri’s planet, had reached the S.S. Huron