Battered by a flurry of firepower, the Enterprise was driven toward Earth. Controlled by one man, the warship followed.
Even given the great warship’s deliberately simplified command and control system, it was still a remarkable feat of piloting on Khan’s behalf: operating the ship, pursuing, and engaging with weaponry all at the same time and all by himself. One could almost believe he might have surreptitiously planned for such a contingency in the designs and suggestions he had provided to the late Alexander Marcus’s Section 31.
“Shields at six percent!” Sulu barely managed to make himself heard above the screaming alarms and repeated explosions that filled the bridge.
In contrast to everyone around him, Spock was strangely calm even for a Vulcan caught in such dire circumstances. “The torpedoes: How much time, Lieutenant?”
The officer he had addressed checked a readout. “Twelve seconds, sir!”
Nodding once, the first officer leaned toward the command chair pickup. “Crew of the Enterprise, this is Commander Spock. All decks prepare for imminent proximity detonation.”
Freed from the brig by the duty guard as soon as everyone had recovered their balance, Kirk and Scott shouldered the injured form of Carol Marcus between them while they struggled toward the nearest turbolift. As they advanced as fast as they could, the voice of the ship’s science officer sounded its warning over multiple speakers.
The struggling chief made a face. “What the hell is he talking about? Proximity detonation? What detonation?”
As Kirk continued running, his eyes widened slightly. “The torpedoes. He armed the damn torpedoes.”
Beside him, Scott was disbelieving. “He couldna gotten away with such, Captain. Surely Khan would have checked them as soon as he got them on board the other ship?”
“As anxious as he was to get his crew back . . .” Kirk muttered. “No, you’re right, Scotty. But he’d have to scan them one at a time. Besides, who would be fool enough to try and arm one manually, right? A photon torpedo is always armed by the sending of an electronic code. Once on the warship, they and their potentially dangerous warheads would be immune to interference from outside, safe behind the warship’s shields. And if only one was manually armed . . .”
The chief engineer was nodding to himself. “Aye . . . then Khan would have to scan that one specifically to even suspect anything was amiss. One warhead a’tick-tocking out of seventy-two.” He shook his head in admiration at the science officer’s audacity. “I can see where to Mr. Spock those would be pretty good odds.”
“Game playing.” Kirk was nodding soberly to himself. “Even a superman should know better than to play chess with a Vulcan.”
On the bridge, Spock leaned back into the firm cushioning of the command chair. “Brace for impact,” he commanded evenly.
This is going to work, he told himself. It had to work. He had computed the probability of success very carefully before deciding to go ahead with the plan.
Even so, he was grateful that none of his colleagues could see how his fingers tightened ever so imperceptibly on the arms of the command chair.
Kirk’s supposition was correct—Spock had ordered Dr. McCoy to arm only a single warhead out of the seventy-two available in the hope that it would not be one that Khan would scan. Now it was inside the warship.
And upon detonation, there were no shields to dampen the force of its explosion, no external walls to absorb any flying fragments. The cargo bay took the full force of the blast. Anything within effective range of the discharge was blown apart.
Including the remaining seventy-one functional warheads that were mounted on the seventy-one other torpedoes.
A gigantic hole ripped open in the stern of the warship. One powerful explosion followed close upon another, then yet more. Systems did not merely go down—they were entirely obliterated. Disruption spread throughout the great ship, affecting everything from life support in the rear four-fifths of its volume, to motive power, to shields and weapons systems. No corner of the crippled vessel was spared.
Igniting oxygen spread brief but intense flames to other parts of the ship. Huge fireballs flared into space as one section after another of the mighty vessel’s structural integrity was violated. As might be expected on board a state-of-the-art warship, fire suppression worked miracles, but it could not prevent a chain of instruments from being fried, nor entire compartments from being reduced to shards of metal, plastic, and other materials that were hurled into the surrounding vacuum.
The bridge suffered horribly, but as the most heavily shielded and best protected section of the ship, it maintained life-support functionality. Barely. Much else went down. Fire and escaping gases filled the vaulted compartment. Consoles collapsed upon themselves. Nothing moved save flame and smoke.
Then a single hand could be discerned: rising, clutching at the still-intact command console. Pulling himself up out of the wreckage that now surrounded him, eyes blazing, Khan embarked on the first of innumerable necessary work-arounds in a determined attempt to keep the warship’s instrumentation functional.
Sulu could not repress a grin as he reported to the science officer. “Sir, their weapons have been knocked out. Not bad, Commander.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Still supporting Carol Marcus between them, Kirk and Scott finally arrived at sickbay. No second explosions jolted them or otherwise threatened their balance.
“Bones— Nurse!”
At once startled and relieved to see them, staff swarmed around the new arrivals. Among those eager to help was Uhura, who assisted the captain in gently easing Carol onto a vacant bed.
“What happened?” she queried the other woman intently. “Are you okay?”
Striving to smile through the pain, Carol managed a weak nod at the communications officer. “I’ll be all right. But my father . . .” Her voice trailed off as she turned her head away.
One day she would have to try and reconcile the man who had raised her with the man she had known in his final moments. People changed with age, she knew. Some grew content, some bitter. Something similar had happened to her father. One day she would learn what that was . . . but not now.
Off to one side, an exuberant McCoy greeted Scott, who was being attended to by a pair of nurses, before moving on to express his joy at the return of his commanding officer and friend.
“Good to see you, Jim.”
Kirk nodded tiredly. “I never thought I’d say this, but it’s a relief to find myself in sickbay.” He gazed earnestly at the smiling doctor. “It was you, wasn’t it? You helped Spock arrange for the torpedo to detonate?”
McCoy nodded, proud and without shame. “Who else? After all, I’m the only one who knows how to manually arm that entirely new type of weapon. Even if I did learn how to do so accidentally.” His grin widened. “As Spock would say, ‘a fortuitous coincidence, Doctor.’”
Kirk still couldn’t believe it. “He killed Khan’s crew. Frozen and unknowing though they were, he killed them.”
McCoy spoke up. “No, he didn’t. Spock’s cold, but he’s not that cold. I’ve got Khan’s crew.” He nodded and pointed to his left.
As Kirk followed McCoy’s gesture, he saw that the main recovery ward had been cleared out, all beds and other equipment either removed or pushed to one side. In its place and occupying the entire space were seventy-two cryoshells that had been removed from their protective torpedoes. Each one was occupied by a three-hundred-year-old genetically warped man or woman.
McCoy’s grin widened. “Seventy-two human popsicles, present and accounted for.”
Kirk could only stare. “Son of a bitch. How did you fool his internal sensors into convincing him that he had transported his crew over to the other ship? You must have known that he would run scans on at least some of them as soon as they were shipped over.”
McCoy explained. “As soon as I learned on that planetoid near Qo’noS that there were cryogenically preserved individuals in those
torpedoes, I had in-depth dimensional bioscans run on all of them in case the opportunity arose to attempt revival and also just as part of normal records keeping. When Spock originally proposed his idea, I had the ship’s bio-repair system generate nominal simulacra of each of the frozen crew. You know—the same process we use to regrow lost or damaged body parts for personnel who have been injured but who aren’t beyond repair and for whom for various medical reasons standard regeneration or prosthetics aren’t an option. I then set the system to duplicate everything. The collagen-based simulacra weren’t perfect—not enough time for that. But I felt they were good enough to fool a quick external probe. We froze the results and had them inserted back into the torpedoes in place of his actual crew. When Khan scanned his transported torpedoes for his people, the sensors he was employing indicated the presence of long-frozen human components within the torpedo bodies.” He shook his head at the memory of it.
“If he had bothered to go and open one of the casings manually, he would have seen immediately how he’d been fooled. But Mr. Superman was in too much of a hurry to lord it over us lesser beings. He trusted the preliminary readings of his instrumentation instead of his own eyes.”
On the bridge, a greatly relieved Sulu turned toward the Vulcan seated in the command chair. “Sir—the internal explosions have completely neutralized the other ship’s weapons systems and shields, and quite possibly her ability to maneuver as well. It is my professional opinion that she is no longer a threat. At this point it should be possible to—”
The sound of power cutting out was immediately recognizable. Internal lighting failed for an instant, until it could be restored by emergency backup. From the Science station, a concerned ensign issued a hasty preliminary report. “Sir, we have inclusive warp core misalignment. The ship’s internal power grid is down.”
“Switch to auxiliary power,” Spock ordered.
A second ensign compounded the bad news. “Auxiliary power is heavily depleted and failing, sir. All backup systems were dangerously stressed in the course of taking evasive maneuvers.” She bit her lower lip. “There’s barely enough to sustain the ship’s life-support systems and minimal artificial gravity. We’ve nothing available for propulsion or maneuvering.”
As Spock was deciding that the ship’s status could not possibly get any worse, a third officer proved him wrong. “Sir, I’m afraid our final maneuvers brought us in to the point where we appear to be caught in the Earth’s gravity well.”
“Mr. Sulu: Position relative to orbital stations?”
The helmsman only had to glance at his readouts. “Given our present rate of descent, sir, there’s nothing near enough to get anything big enough to us in time to halt our dive.”
Spock absorbed this. “Can we change our angle of descent enough to enter a temporary orbit? Even a low one?”
Sulu stared at his helm controls, sat back. Red lights he could have dealt with, but . . . there were no lights at all. No readouts—nothing. A situation unprecedented in his experience—but that didn’t mean he was unaware of the consequences. Essentially, the ship’s helm was . . . dead.
“Commander,” he reported professionally, “given what I’m seeing here, I can’t do anything.”
As the Enterprise shuddered and bounced, Uhura arrived on the bridge and stumbled to her station, easing aside the ensign who had been attending to it in her absence. Meanwhile, Sulu voiced what everyone around him already knew.
In sickbay, McCoy rushed toward the bed on which Carol Marcus lay and began to strap her in position. “Emergency lockdown!” To the patient he added more softly, “I hope you don’t get seasick.”
She smiled up at him. “Do you?”
His expression was already reflecting his discomfort. “Yeah.”
“If we can’t get engine power or shields back online,” Sulu declared as he worked his instrumentation, “we’ll be incinerated on entry.”
Calculating his options, Spock found that, yet again, fate had given him nothing worthwhile to work with. “Lieutenant,” he said, addressing Uhura, “sound evacuation. All decks.” Spinning the command chair, he addressed them all. “As acting captain, I order you to abandon the ship.” A touch of a control set in one arm activated the seat’s emergency harness. Like a pair of striking snakes, the twin segmented safety belts snapped into place across his torso, securing him in place against violent jolting as well as a potential loss of artificial gravity.
Although all eyes were on him, no one moved.
“I will remain aboard,” he continued, “to re-route and reapportion remaining power to life support, gravity, and evacuation shuttle bays. Once again: I order you to abandon ship.”
No one moved from their stations.
Spock repeated the command, more forcefully this time. “I order you all to abandon this ship!”
It was left, not for the first time, to Sulu to respond. “With all due respect, Commander—but we’re not going anywhere.” Turning in the helmsman’s seat, he activated his own crash harness. All around the bridge the same sharp snap was repeated as one set of emergency braces after another was locked into place.
Observing the unauthorized activity surrounding him, Spock contemplated repeated the order for a third time and finally decided against it. Humans being the demonstrably stubborn species that they were, he felt certain it would have been a waste of time. Should he survive, he knew he would have to include the mass disobedience in his official report. For some reason, though, he was not quite sure he would be able to manage that entry. There was the thought that should he attempt to do so, his eyes might give him trouble.
At least the ship’s computer spared him the need to speak any further.
“Attention, all decks. Evacuation protocols initiated. Attention, all decks, proceed to exit bays and report to your assigned evacuation shuttle. . . .”
XVI
Scott grabbed for a handhold as his feet momentarily left the floor and he started to slide up the near wall. The ship’s gravity precessers were beginning to struggle against the competing pull of the Earth’s own gravity.
“There’s not gonna be an evacuation if there’s no power to stabilize the damn ship! ” he shouted at the captain. “We lose power to the precessers and artificial gravity will be all over the place. People will be literally climbin’ the walls trying to get to their evac shuttles.”
Kirk pressed him for a solution. “Can we restore it? Get back enough power to stabilize ship’s gravity along with life support, at least until everyone is safely off?”
“Maybe, Captain. But only from Engineering—not from the bridge.”
It only got worse as they raced for Engineering itself. Occasionally they found themselves running along walls. Once, the precessers flipped completely and they had to make their way carefully along the ceiling. It was the same for everyone else on board. As the situation grew more critically unstable it became increasingly difficult for personnel to make their way to the evacuation shuttle bays. Objects as well as personnel tended to cling one moment to the floor and the next slide up a wall. Hands hunted for something solid and unmoving to grip. Queasiness became the norm. Throughout the confusion, it was all the ship’s compromised computer system could do to keep the artificial gravity on the wounded Enterprise from slewing crazily from one degree to another and slamming its crew around like ball bearings in a barrel.
There was apprehension but no panic on the Enterprise as anxious crewmembers scrambled to find and board their assigned evac vehicles. This close to Earth, the shuttles would require very little programming. There was no reason everyone could not get off and down to ground safely—provided they could reach their assigned stations. The difficulty arose from the conflict between Earth’s intensifying pull and the increasingly erratic operation of the ship’s artificial gravity system. While the crew was prepared to deal with an emergency that saw them walking on floors one minute and ceilings the next, the constant gravitational flux forced everyone to go v
ery slowly to avoid injury. As a result, the majority of the crew had yet to make it halfway to their designated shuttles.
If conditions did not improve, they might not have enough time to make it at all before the Enterprise disintegrated on entry.
Well aware of the increasing danger, Kirk and Scott made their way toward Engineering as fast as circumstances permitted. They were almost there when the ship’s gravity gave a sudden lurch. Scott compared it to floating in a giant bathtub that had just been given an abrupt shove. The unexpected gravitational switch saw him tossed over a railing toward a deck below. Only Kirk’s rapid reaction in getting a hand on the engineer’s forearm saved Scott from being smashed against the unyielding metal below.
The captain’s grip was firm, but he could do nothing about the shifting forces beneath his feet. As they changed direction once again, he felt himself starting to follow Scott over the rail. Straining hard, he tried to wrap his other arm around the railing to stabilize the two of them, at which point their continuing survival became a matter of muscle. Charged with supporting the chief’s weight, he felt his own strength ebbing. Even if he lost his grasp and went over, he told himself, he wouldn’t let go of Scott.
At the last possible instant, hands grabbed his arms and gripped tight. “I’ve got you, Keptin!”
Strung out over the railing, the three of them stayed like that a moment longer. At the same time as Chekov began to pull Kirk back, and Kirk to pull Scott, the gravity shifted again, and Kirk’s feet found firmer footing. Soon the three of them were standing on what, for the moment at least, was a solid deck.
Scott was grateful, but there was no time to waste on extended expressions of gratitude. Instead, he glared at the ensign.
“What’d you do to me core?”
“Nothing,” Chekov stammered as the ship rocked around them. “You can have it back!”
Star Trek: Into Darkness: film tie-in novelization Page 23
