Story:The Gift/The Final Days

Stories → The Gift → Prologue, part 2

The Gift - The Final Days They'd built an Empire together and ruled it by brute force, but Vulcans and humans had fallen out long ago over Spock's efforts to reform the Empire. Many Vulcans had supported those efforts, and because of this most humans blamed Vulcans for their Empire's misfortunes. The latest war had broken out after the Narendra III incident almost twenty years earlier, and it wasn't going well for the Empire. It was rare these days to see a Vulcan on a battleship as anything more than a slave, let alone as Chief Medical Officer. Selar was in fact a slave, but was reluctantly appointed CMO because she was the only one aboard with the medical knowledge who was still alive, and the war made for a shortage of all officers.

That same shortage was one reason her latest patient was still on board. Wesley Crusher hated Captain Picard and Commander Troi because of what they did to his mother. They would rather have disposed of him as well, but the war made someone with his talents indispensable. Right now Selar was treating him for injuries suffered in the latest battle with Alliance ships.

"Why did Spock do what he did?" Ensign Crusher asked as Selar was treating him.

Selar told him about the transporter accident, and how the other universe's Kirk had urged Spock to try to reform the Empire and prevent its collapse in a devastating civil war, as the Halkans had predicted would happen by the time the galaxy was conquered.

An hour earlier the I.S.S. Enterprise's First Officer would never have questioned the Empire's orders to annihilate the Halkans. But while his captain and the rest of the away team were returning from the planet's surface, a transporter malfunction had caused them to change places with their counterparts from an alternate universe where Vulcans no longer ruled an empire built on conquest and expansion. They were now members of a united federation with Earth and other planets that Spock had learned about from a mind-meld with one of its officers. Before returning to his own universe, Captain Kirk's Federation counterpart had urged Spock to consider the Halkan prediction of civil war, and to try to forestall this by leading a movement to reform the Empire.

Kirk's own landing party had materialized inside the transporter chamber just as the counterparts beamed out, and Kirk could tell at once his counterpart had caused Spock and Marlena to question their loyalty to him. But it was already too late. Realizing Kirk intended to have him killed, Spock was forced to get rid of his own captain in self-defense and take command of the Enterprise. A quick snap of the neck--an ancient Vulcan execution technique--and it was done. It was a far more merciful death than that Kirk had shown billions of others who dared defy the Empire.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING, SPOCK!?!?" McCoy yelled as he lunged toward Spock, knife drawn. His knife was embedded in Kirk's body, which Spock had used as a shield, and before McCoy could pull it out, Spock threw the captain's body at Uhura, who had drawn her phaser. Uhura vaporized Kirk's body with her phaser, along with McCoy's embedded knife. Spock's own inner eyelids shielded his retinae as the resulting glow blinded Uhura long enough for Spock to move toward her and disarm her. He then notified his security team to take McCoy and Uhura into custody, and beamed down to the Halkan surface. With help from Marlena Moreau, a Starfleet chemist Kirk had kept around as part plaything and part punching bag, Spock and his security team located and took control of the Tantalus Field, Kirk’s secret weapon for making enemies “disappear”.

Spock still had two hours to act against the Halkans per a private communication from Starfleet. He decided to make use of this time by beaming down to the planet’s surface and sharing his recent experience with them, and learned the Federation and Halkan governments were very similar; the primary difference was size. He sought to have a mining team from the Enterprise allowed to begin operations on the planet’s surface in exchange for a promise on his part to work to reform the Empire so that every planet would have a voice in its policies. By convincing the Halkans they were of more value as a living model to pattern reforms after than as an extinct race, Spock obtained the concessions he had asked for. With a fresh supply of dilithium, he took the Enterprise to Vulcan.

"Do you know if they can duplicate what happened with the transporter?" Wesley asked.

"It's been done," Selar answered. "Spock's security team located the device the first crossovers used to return. He used it to send one of his crewmembers to the other side without bringing her counterpart here, once she showed him how Kirk made his enemies 'disappear.' Years later, one of the rebels used it to take his katra to the other side, because Mt. Seleya was under Earth control."

Saavik hadn't immediately crossed over after receiving Spock's katra. She and other Vulcans had helped form a resistance to Earth rule after Spock's ouster, and Spock was able to witness its formation in this manner. For their perceived efforts to subvert the Empire the Halkans felt the new government's full wrath and were annihilated. Those who perished did not include Tharn, who had died from natural causes shortly after the elections Spock ordered were held.

War broke out with the Klingons a few years after Spock was overthrown,and early Klingon victories were made possible by the Empire's recent upheavals, but then the explosion of Praxis crippled their own industries and would have led to their being conquered if the Empire's occupation of Bajor hadn't brought it into conflict with the neighboring Cardassian Union. The Empire was fighting a two-front war, which led to a stalemate, and both sides agreed to a cease-fire. No prisoner exchange took place after the war, and prisoners on both sides performed slave labor.

Most Bajorans had welcomed the chance to join the Alliance and turn the tables on their conquerors. However a number of vedeks and other Bajorans realized that by joining the Alliance their people had become no better than the Terrans had been, and gave shelter to human and Vulcan slaves who had escaped their overseers. Those given refuge included Tuvok, a security crewman on the Excelsior at the time of its capture. The vedeks also made sure slaves who were too young to remember knew about the different way of life that Spock and other Vulcans had tried to offer them.

Two more wars broke out with the Alliance in the next few decades. In the first one the Empire used its new Excalibur class ships, but it overextended itself by destroying the Ferengi homeworld when it learned the Ferengi were supplying the Alliance with dilithium crystals. Earth forces fell back from Vulcan while the Niagara class ships entered service. The Vulcans revived their resistance movement as their world was being overrun, and with the help of sympathetic Bajorans located sites in the Badlands where they were able to construct bases undetectable to the Alliance. They were also hidden from the Empire, and this was just as well. By now Earth decided the Vulcans were more of a liability than an asset, and offered a cease-fire that ceded Vulcan. Earth agreed not to give any aid to the rebels, and to turn over to the Alliance any rebels apprehended. The Alliance accepted. The latter clause was not always adhered to, and Vulcans became slaves to both powers.

"Your parents were rebels, weren't they?"

Selar nodded. They had worked with Tuvok's resistance cell, and were apprehended three years after Vulcan was ceded.

Both Empire and Alliance knew whose visit had such a profound influence on Spock, and through Spock the Vulcan people as a whole. After overthrowing Spock, Admiral Cartwright ordered that anyone found to have crossed over from the other universe be executed at once to avoid any further "profound effects," and the Alliance agreed this was a sound policy.

The possibility of deliberately crossing to the other universe had not been lost on scientists from either power. Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott raised that possibility after Spock left the Enterprise, and they were able to conduct their own experiments on the transporter. It was realized early on that even if the transporter could be rigged as a crossover device there was no way to detect with sensors beforehand where in another universe an object was being transported. They did, nevertheless, figure that they could scan objects in another universe at the moment the transporter was activated and interdimensional contact established. In this way they were able to calibrate the transporter so that if a planet was below the same planet was in the universe being targeted. It was even found possible to send clipped subspace messages to the landing parties, and they were able to monitor subspace communications in other dimensions for short periods of time. The Empire ordered a number of starship crews to expand on this work, and some Terran slaves earned theta designations by helping the Alliance conduct its own research. By comparing intercepted communications with the observations of the original landing party, both sides were able to identify the universe the "visitors" had most likely come from. The Excalibur-class ships even had a cargo transporter in their shuttle bays capable of transporting a shuttle into the other universe. Shuttle crews would patrol a given area of Federation space, then park at a given time and place, and be transported back. Both sides felt threatened by the prospect of crossovers from the other universe, and might have eventually conducted joint research if another war hadn't broken out.

"After Spock was overthrown the Empire survived because of Praxis, " Selar said. In the war that followed it bought time by offering Vulcan to the Alliance. This time there's nothing left to offer. Or as your people are fond of saying, 'no more cards to play'. They estimate the Empire will fall in about six months, a year at the latest."

"I've been wondering about that myself," Wesley admitted nervously. "I guess you won't be sorry to see us humans become slaves just as your people are."

"I'll be sorry to see you become one of them."

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