Captain’s Log, Stardate 9529.1

            This is the final cruise of the Starship Enterprise under my command.  This ship, and her history, will shortly become the care of another crew.  To them, and their posterity will we commit our future.  They will continue the voyages we have begun and journey to all the undiscovered countries, boldly going where no man…where no one…has gone before.

Captain James Kirk sighed as he leaned his head backwards, letting his neck pop twice while it curled over the back of his chair.  He stared up at the ceiling of his cabin on the Enterprise, knowing it was a view he wouldn’t likely see ever again after today.

The repairs had more or less finished for now, but those repairs were a useless gesture.  His crew was to be decommissioned…but so was his ship, the Enterprise.  Even before Starfleet Command had informed him did he know that fact.  The Enterprise was old, this particular one was older than the first one had been when it had been destroyed.  The Yorktown had originally been built around the same time as the original Enterprise…

The chime to his cabin sounded, forcing him to uncurl his neck and to look straight ahead again, at the door.

“Yes…come in.”

When the doors parted, a smile came over his face as Captain Spock stepped through, his uniform neat and tidy, without a single wrinkle or speck of dust on it.

“Why, Mister Spock,” he said jovially.  “What brings you here this early in the morning?”

Keeping his usual calm, Spock stepped further into his cabin and nodded.  “Captain.  I wished to inform you that we’ll be arriving at Earth by mid afternoon today.”

Kirk frowned and looked Spock square in the eye.  “Spock, I knew that yesterday.  What really brought you here?”

Spock visibly hesitated, which he never did.  There had to be something wrong.  “I find myself in a bit of a moral dilemma,” he said, letting his uncertainty give his voice a certain edge to it.

Kirk let his surprise show on his face as he sat up straighter in his chair.  “You, in a moral dilemma?  Spock, that…that’s fantastic!”

Spock raised his right eyebrow in the way that he always did, then nodded.  “Indeed.”

Kirk smiled, then shook his head.  “I’m sorry, go on.”

Spock moved to one side of the cabin and seemed to observe the wall.  After a few moments, he finally turned around and began talking.  “This dilemma began right after I first opened a diplomatic channel to Chancellor Gorkon…well, before our encounter with his ship and the Bird of Prey.”  He paused again, frowning his pointed eyebrows in a way that could only mean there really was a war going on inside of him.  “I began to realize the value of Ambassadors, such as my Father, and at that time, I began to consider myself…a possible candidate for a Federation ambassadorial position.”

Kirk narrowed his eyes and tilted his head to the side.  “You mean to tell me that you, too, are going to retire from Starfleet?”

Spock looked at him and raised both of his eyebrows.  “That isn’t what I just stated.  However…I am considering it now.”

Kirk sighed and looked down at the deck for a moment, considering what Spock was saying.  “You know, you probably could stay in service for another hundred years if you wanted.”  He looked up at Spock.  “Why would you leave Starfleet to become an ambassador?”

Spock once again clearly hesitated.  To try to hide his hesitation, he walked around the cabin for another few moments, then looked back to Kirk.

“It’s not just about becoming an ambassador,” he admitted.  “Although that is primarily the reason.  However, as we approach Earth…something else continually is on my mind.”

Kirk frowned for a moment, then realized just what Spock was talking about.  “All these years serving on the Enterprise with this crew.  You’re not entirely sure you want to continue serving on Starships with a different crew…and you’re not sure that you want to try doing anything less while in Starfleet.”

Spock stared at him for a moment, then nodded.  “I believe that is correct.  However…this simply is not logical.”

Kirk smiled and shook his head.  “No, it’s not…but it is human.”

Spock once again raised his right eyebrow, then looked down at the deck.

“Bridge to Captain Kirk,” Pavel Chekov’s heavy Russian accent interrupted.

Kirk stood up from his chair and moved over to a panel, switching open the channel.  “Kirk here.”

“Sir, we’re getting anomalous readings from directly ahead.  Some sort of an anomaly seems to be forming…”

Both Kirk and Spock looked at each other.  The stress in Chekov’s voice meant that it had to be close.

“Understood…we’re on our way up.”

He switched the channel closed, then looked at Spock.  “Spock…”

Spock nodded and already started to follow him.  “Yes, Captain…you need me on the bridge.”

Kirk paused for a moment, then smiled before heading out the exit.

“Report,” Kirk ordered as he stepped out of the turbolift and onto the bridge.  Spock immediately headed for his console.

Chekov stood up from the command chair and moved away to let Kirk take his place in front of it.  “We’re ten seconds from intercept.  It’s about two light years outside of the solar system.”

Kirk sat down in his chair and looked ahead at the view screen.  While Chekov took his console, Kirk ordered, “Come to a full stop ten thousand kilometers away from the anomaly.”  He looked over to the science station.

“Spock?”

Spock remained stationary, examining his scanners for a moment, then pulled away from the viewer and looked curiously at Kirk.  “I am having difficulty penetrating the anomaly with sensors.  However, there does appear to be some sort of emissions coming from the anomaly.  I can not be absolutely certain, but I believe those emissions are tachyon emissions.”

Kirk frowned at him as a thought came to mind.  “Aren’t those generally a result of a worm hole?”

Spock frowned as he further considered.  “Not necessarily, though those generally are the cause of such massive emissions.  However, this anomaly is unlike any wormhole ever encountered.”

“We’re at full stop, Captain,” the helmsman stated.  “Ten thousand kilometers.”

Kirk looked back ahead at the view screen to see the anomaly directly ahead.  It wasn’t overly large, but it was definitely very bright.  It was primarily a light blue color with several rays, whether that was caused from sensor overload errors or actual anomalous light projections from the anomaly.

“Speculation as to the anomaly’s nature,” Kirk ordered.  Starfleet hadn’t had much experience with tachyon emissions…their sensors still had trouble detecting them.

After a moment, Spock said, “The anomaly does appear to have some sort of effect on the surrounding subspace and space.  I suspect that it may have a corresponding anomaly in a different location.  If you were to enter this one, you would exit the corresponding one in its location.”

Kirk frowned and looked over to Spock.  “So it is a worm hole, then?”

Spock looked back from his viewer.  “No, it most definitely is not a worm hole.  I’m having some difficulty discerning these readings accurately…” Once again, he hesitated…this indeed was an unusual day.  “But it appears that the space time continuum around the anomaly may be distorted.”

Kirk frowned as Spock stared back at him.  “What are you getting?”

He hesitated again.  “The anomaly…may somehow be temporal.”

Kirk felt his eye brows raise as he slowly stood up from his chair.  “You mean…time travel?”

He looked at the view screen and shook his head.  “In the few encounters we’ve had with time travel, we’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“In fact there has been no anomaly ever recorded that has been similar to this one,” Spock added.  “It is not symmetrical and the light patterns appear to be somewhat erratic, which suggests it is somehow a naturally occurring phenomenon.”

Kirk again was surprised as he craned his neck back over to look at Spock.  “Are you suggesting that this was not created by someone else?!  Spock, the reason we’ve never encountered anything like that is because…it’s theoretically impossible!”

Spock nodded.  “That indeed was the theory.  There is now evidence to the contrary.”

“Captain, look!”

Kirk once again looked at the view screen to see the anomaly to begin to fluctuate, first growing, then shrinking, then growing again…then it began to shrink, and it did not stop.

“The anomaly appears to be collapsing,” Spock reported.  “I’m getting some readings of the interior…Captain, perhaps I was wrong.”

Kirk again looked at Spock, who once again turned to look at him.  “There appears to be a ship in the center.”

He once again was shocked and looked at the view screen just in time to see the anomaly completely collapse…leaving an unusual, yet somehow familiar ship in it’s place.

The bridge crew stared at the view screen for a long while, not quite sure what to make of it.  It was very different from anything they had seen…but somehow…

“That ship almost looks…Federation,” Chekov commented.

“I can not scan beyond the outer hull,” Spock commented.  “Tachyon radiation appears to have saturated the hull.  Judging by the design, and the theory that the anomaly was temporal, this very well could be a future Federation starship.”

“Uhura, try hailing them,” Kirk ordered, stepping forward a few steps, examining every line he could.  “And magnify on that ship, fill the view screen with it.”

As Uhura began her hail, the view screen immediately zoomed in.  There appeared to be the three distinctive parts inherent to Federation ships: nacelles, engineering, and saucer.  Like the Excelsior class, they all molded together more than any other starship with those three parts before hand…but this ship took that to a new extreme.  The saucer seemed to simply mold into the stardrive, like they were one and the same…

“No response to our hails, and I can’t be certain that they are receiving us,” Uhura reported from her station.

Kirk was curious as to what exactly this ship was…so he decided to satiate curiosity.  “Try zooming in where that spotlight is on the saucer.  Let’s see if we can get an ID on this thing.”

There was a pause, then it zoomed in.  The top lettering was smaller than the bottom, but it was all crystal clear.  “USS Dragon.  NCC-27749-B.”

“Obviously from the future,” Spock commented.  “There is no original 27749 in current service, nor has there been any ships in service with the name USS Dragon.”

Kirk looked at Spock and nodded.  “Well, I guess this pretty much makes your theory a fact.”

Spock nodded back.  “Indeed.  Considering the fact that no one has ever been observed to have such intense amounts of tachyon radiation, and considering the fact that the ship traveled through a temporal anomaly, I suggest that we send a team over to investigate and to make sure that the crew is not injured.”