The Autobiography of James T. Kirk Read online

  The Autobiography of James T. Kirk

  Print Edition ISBN: 9781783297467

  E-Book Edition ISBN: 9781783297474

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: September 2015

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  The Autobiography of James T. Kirk is produced by becker&mayer! Book Producers, Bellevue, Washington.

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  Jacket design: Julia Lloyd

  Illustrations: Russell Walks

  Editor: Dana Youlin

  Interior design: Rosanna Brockley

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  FOREWORD BY LEONARD H. MCCOY, M.D.

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  PICTURE SECTION

  AFTERWORD BY SPOCK OF VULCAN

  ABOUT THE EDITOR

  EDITOR GOODMAN’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Mom

  FOREWORD

  BY LEONARD H. MCCOY, M.D.

  FIRST LET ME JUST SAY, I’M A DOCTOR NOT A WRITER. But, having read this memoir, I’ve decided I do have something to add. For the most part, Jim Kirk said everything that needed to be said about himself. But he left out one important detail, for the obvious reason that he was too modest to think it, let alone say it, so I will:

  He was the greatest hero who ever lived.

  Now, before you assume I’m exaggerating, and before I tell you to go to hell, let’s look at his life objectively. Who else in the last fifty years was at the center of so many critical events? Who else in that time made more decisions that affected the course of civilization? It seems unbelievable that so much history could be centered around one person, but the record is clear. And I don’t know whether it was divine providence, luck, or the mythical Great Bird of the Galaxy that determined the man who would be in the center seat of the Starship Enterprise, I’m just thankful it was Jim Kirk.

  Though he skips this description of himself, his memoir leaves out little else, and for that reason it is revelatory. The personal secrets in here paint an honest portrait of the man. In some ways, he was just like the rest of us: lonely, ambitious, a son, a father, a lover, never truly content. Where he set himself apart is in the way he took responsibility for his mistakes, embraced his weaknesses, and always strove to do better, to be better. It is in this way that he is a true hero; despite his successes, he knew there was always more work to be done, and he never shied away from the call of duty. His passing is a catastrophic loss; he looked after all of us.

  For me, the loss is personal: I had no better friend, and I raise my glass to him one last time.

  To James T. Kirk, captain of the Enterprise.

  PROLOGUE

  HIDING IN THE BASEMENT ON THE RUN FROM THE POLICE, it was difficult to see how I was going to save the Galaxy. But I had to work with what was at hand. Our hideout was neither well equipped nor comfortable. The brick room was cold and dark, smelled of ash and rodent urine, and its only source of heat against the bitter winter outside was a small coal-burning stove. All it provided in the way of equipment were thick cobwebs and a pile of damaged furniture. There were a few wooden storage boxes, stained presumably from exposed pipes that crisscrossed the low ceiling. Of course, the lack of the amenities was moot. This “headquarters” was only temporary, as it was doubtful the occupants of the building above would ignore us forever, especially if alerted by the local authorities.

  And that was a concern, because though we’d been in the city, and the century, for less than ten minutes, I’d already managed to break the law. When we arrived through the time portal, I realized our uniforms made us stand out, so I stole some indigenous clothes hanging out to dry on the fire escape of a tenement building. Unfortunately, a policeman had observed my theft, so my companion had to momentarily disable him, allowing our escape. At the time, the crime didn’t seem serious, but now I was having second thoughts; I had stolen the clothes from people living in poverty, who certainly couldn’t afford to replace two sets of shirts and pants. This was further confirmed as I put the flannel shirt and cotton slacks on; though it presumably had been washed, the shirt still carried the strong odor of its owner’s sweat. This smell was mixed with traces of diesel oil, tobacco smoke, and alcohol. The cloths’ “bouquet” told a story: a primitive life of hard work, its stresses dulled by the use of cheap anesthetics. I found myself wishing for some.

  “It’s time we faced the unpleasant facts,” I said. And they seemed endless. We didn’t know where we were, only somewhere in the United States, and that we had arrived in the past before McCoy. That was crucial. We knew he would change the past, and thereby wipe out our future, but we didn’t know exactly how. And we didn’t know exactly when or where he would arrive.

  “There is a theory,” Spock said, when I voiced these concerns. “There could be some logic to the belief that time is fluid, like a river. With currents, eddies, backwash …”

  So McCoy was going to surf a time current and wash up on our doorstep? If Spock hadn’t been a Vulcan who had devoted his life to the pursuit of logic, I would’ve said it was wishful thinking. I had no choice, however, but to invest in this belief, because if McCoy were to show up somewhere else, how would we know? And even if by some miracle we found out, how would we get there? And even if we could get there, modes of travel were so primitive that we’d never reach another city in time to stop him. We didn’t even know what he was going to do, so if any time passed before we found McCoy, he might have already changed the future. No, I was going to stick with Spock’s river analogy. The alternative was too overwhelmingly bleak, and the fact that my unfailingly logical science officer believed it possible at least gave me hope.

  “Frustrating,” Spock said, referring to his tricorder. “Locked in here is the exact place and moment of his arrival. Even the images of what he did. If only I could tie this tricorder in with the ship’s computer for just a few moments …”

  “Couldn’t you build some form of computer aid here?” I said.

  “In this zinc-plated, vacuum-tubed culture?” Sometimes Spock spoke to me as though I was an idiot, and I knew most captains wouldn’t put up with that from their first officers. But I accepted it as part of the package. And I had my own ways of torturing him.

  “Well, it would prove to be an extremely complex problem in logic,” I said, then turned to warm my hands in front of the stove. “Excuse me, I sometimes expect too mu
ch of you.” The truth was, I did expect too much of him. Spock was right—the idea that he could construct a processing aid with technology 300 years out of date was ridiculous. Yet I fully expected that he’d be able to do it. And that expectation would motivate him to try. So I would leave that to him while I saw to our survival. Which seemed almost as impossible as building a computer from scratch.

  We were stuck in an ancient capitalist-driven society where the only way to see to one’s needs was by having money. We had none, and if we were going to survive, we were going to have to figure out how to earn some during a period where finding work was next to impossible. The more I thought about the situation, the more depressing it became. A lot of ancient religions relied on the concept of prayer, and in that moment I recognized the compelling power of superstition, to be able to silently ask for aid and comfort from a higher power. We would need help, and there was no one to ask, and I didn’t believe in angels …

  “Who’s there?” A woman stood at the top of the stairs. I moved to intercept her to give Spock a moment to cover his ears with the wool hat I’d stolen for him. She stood in the light a few steps above me. She was in her thirties, wearing a plain blouse, skirt, and apron. Simple clothing, all somehow made elegant by its wearer.

  “Excuse us, miss,” I said, “we didn’t mean to trespass. It’s cold outside.”

  “A lie is a very poor way to say hello,” she said. “It isn’t that cold.” Her light blue eyes carried a disdainful expression that immediately held sway over me. I knew at that moment either my lies were going to have to be a lot better, or that I was going to have to tell her the truth, as much of the truth as I could.

  And I wanted to. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to hide anything from her. And I would shortly learn that Spock’s river analogy was true, and she was where it led. Because of her, I would literally save history. And I would also regret it for the rest of my life.

  CHAPTER 1

  WHEN MY MOTHER LEFT EARTH for a job on another planet, she said she’d be back often, and since I was nine, I took her at her word. The idea that a grown-up would not tell me the truth was beyond my experience.

  I was with her and my dad on the front porch of our farm. The sun was setting and a few fireflies were out. You could see for miles; in the distance dark clouds let loose a bolt of lightning. My brother, Sam, was inside, lost in a book on his reader. Sam was twelve; he was always reading lately.

  “I’m leaving in the morning,” she said.

  “Why do you have to go?”

  My mother crouched down and met me eye-to-eye. She told me how important it was for her to go, and that it didn’t mean she didn’t love me. She had gotten a job as part of a colony on a planet called Tarsus IV. She said ships went back and forth all the time. I looked up at my dad, who was looking away. He watched the storm in the distance.

  “When will you be back?”

  “It’ll be a few months,” she said. “I’ll definitely be back in time for your birthday.”

  “You don’t know that,” Dad snapped angrily. It was the first time he’d spoken since we had walked outside. I looked at him again, but he was still watching the storm.

  “I’ll be here,” she said, still looking at me, determined to make it feel true. She then hugged me and lifted me up in her arms, making a big show of my weight. “God, you’re so big. C’mon, let’s get some dessert.”

  She looked over at Dad, then looked down. I desperately wanted him to make eye contact with her, and I could feel that Mom did too. But he wouldn’t.

  The next morning she was gone, taking my idea of home with her.

  Up to then I’d had a wonderful boyhood, filled with dogs, campfires, birthdays, horseback riding, snowball fights, and plenty of friends. Just like the Earth of today, there was no poverty or war or deprivation. My parents would talk about the problems in the Galaxy, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Sometimes I’d look up in the sky and my brother would point out to me the satellites or a shuttle taking off, but that’s as close as my mind got to outer space. Close to home felt perfect.

  We lived on a farm near Riverside, Iowa, on a piece of property that had about 200 hectares of crops. We grew soybeans and corn, had chickens for eggs and cattle for milk and cheese. As far back as I can remember we were up at 4 a.m. every day to feed the chickens and milk the cows. Most of the caring of the crops was handled by automated machinery, but my father still insisted we get out in the fields for planting and harvesting. Though we were in no way dependent on the farm for our livelihood, my father still thought it important to understand the work involved in living off our land.

  The house was four bedrooms, two floors, brick and wood. It was built using authentic materials and was a perfect copy of the house that had stood on the property for over 100 years in the 19th and 20th centuries. The property had belonged to seven generations of Kirks; it was family legend that my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Franklin Kirk, purchased the farm in 1843 from Isaac Cody, who was the father of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody.* My ancestors in the modern era let caretakers manage it, until my grandparents moved back there when they retired. My father, George Kirk, also always had a strong desire to live there.

  He had grown up as one of the original “Starfleet brats”; his father, Tiberius Kirk, was already in his twenties when Starfleet Academy was founded, and though he applied, he wasn’t accepted. Still wanting to get out into space, Tiberius signed on in ordnance and supply, eventually serving on several of the then-new starbases. He met and married my paternal grandmother, Brunhilde Ann Milano, a nurse, on Starbase 8. My father was born there on December 13, 2206.

  In those days, a child’s life on a starbase was pretty spartan; there weren’t a lot of families living on them, and the facilities were very limited. It was truly life on the frontier, and my father dreamed of getting back to see Earth, a dream that wouldn’t be fulfilled until he arrived for his first day at Starfleet Academy. It was my grandfather’s hope that his son would go to the academy, and admission had gotten even more competitive. But after rescuing five men after an explosion on the loading dock of Starbase 8, Tiberius was awarded the Starfleet Medal of Honor. And though my grandfather was still an enlisted man, the children of Medal of Honor winners are always given high priority during the admissions process.

  My father graduated fifth in his class from the academy and, after serving a year as an instructor, was assigned to the U.S.S. Los Angeles (where he served with future captain Robert April). He was quickly promoted and eventually took the post of first officer aboard the U.S.S. Kelvin, when the previous first officer, Richard Robau, was promoted to captain. Over the course of six years he had moved up the ranks at record speed. If his career had continued, he might have been one of the youngest captains in the history of Starfleet, but his personal life led him in a different direction.

  My mother, born Winona Davis, was also from a spacegoing family; her father, James Ogaleesha Davis (his middle name, as befit his heritage, was Native American Sioux, although I never did find out what it meant*), was in the first graduating class of Starfleet Academy; his wife, Wendy Felson, was in the third. My maternal grandfather was an engineer, my maternal grandmother a physician, and their daughter, my mother, attended the academy and decided she wanted to be an astrobiologist. She was four years younger than my father, and had him as an instructor in her Introduction to Federation History class.

  “There were strict rules about students ‘fraternizing’ with instructors,” she told me, “and once I met your father, I wanted to break all of them.”

  It is hard to know how many of the rules they actually broke, as a son usually doesn’t delve into those topics with his parents. However, when my father received his posting to the Los Angeles, the ship was still three months away from returning to Earth, so he asked for a short leave from his duties as an instructor, and immediately proposed to my mother.

  “Most people assumed we’d made
a terrible mistake,” my mom said, “but it was impossible for us to see a possible downside then. We were crazy in love.” And then, suddenly, the Los Angeles arrived, and my dad was off.

  My mom was still in the academy and said she secretly hoped that they’d be posted together. It was over a year before she saw him next, and then almost two years after that, she graduated. She was not, however, posted to the same ship as Dad. Shortly after my mother was posted to the U.S.S. Patton, she discovered she was pregnant.

  “Your father was aboard the Los Angeles then,” she told me, “and by the time the subspace message reached him I was already in my second trimester.”

  Mom’s Starfleet career came to an abrupt halt; she took a leave of absence, moving in with my dad’s parents on Earth (her parents had passed away several years earlier) on the family farm. My brother, George Samuel, named for my father, was born on August 17, 2230.

  The maximum amount of time my mother could stay away from Starfleet without resigning her commission was two years. For that period, she and my father were apart. She stayed on the farm and raised George with her in-laws, while she also continued her studies and completed a doctorate in astrobiology.

  “It was a good time to be with George Jr.,” she said, “but I missed George Sr. This was not what I expected my life to be. My own mother had resigned her commission when she had me. She had raised my brother and me by herself since Dad was off in space. I was determined not to be a single parent, yet here I found myself doing just that.”

  She told me she felt conflicted about leaving her two-year-old son. “Your grandparents were energetic and attentive, which made the decision a little easier, but I couldn’t get past the idea that I was abandoning my baby.”

  Dad also missed Mom, and when the two years were up, he pulled whatever strings he could to get her posted to the Kelvin, where he was now the first officer. Unfortunately, soon after she arrived, she discovered she was pregnant again, this time with me.