Duty, Honor, Redemption

by Novelization by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “No, it’s Excelsior that’s the wave of the future,” J.T. said.

  The door to the lounge slid open to admit Carol Marcus, accompanied by David. Carol nodded to Jim coolly; if she was not still angry at him, at best she was not yet willing to forget about last night’s conversation.

  “Carol,” Jim said, “this is J.T. Esteban, commanding the Grissom. J.T., Doctor Carol Marcus, and her son…” Jim paused, thinking he really should say, “Our son,” but deciding not to because it would take so long to explain. “Her son, Doctor David Marcus.”

  “Two for the price of one,” David said.

  Jim chuckled and Carol smiled. Missing the joke, J.T. rubbed his jaw and frowned.

  “This is sensitive information,” he said. “I only expected Doctor Marcus, senior.”

  David’s smile vanished. “I can take a hint,” he said. He headed toward the door, the irritation in his voice mirrored in his stiff-shouldered walk.

  “David—” Jim said, but David kept walking.

  “David, wait,” Carol said.

  David hesitated, then glanced back.

  “David is a full member of the Genesis team, Captain Esteban,” Carol said. “He and I are the only surviving principal investigators. Anything you have to say about Genesis, you must say to him as well as to me.”

  “The first thing I have to say is I wish you’d called it something else,” Esteban said.

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “It’s too late now, but it wasn’t the wisest move you could have made, in terms of PR. Never mind that, for the moment. Doctor Marcus—” He addressed David this time. “I apologize for my bad manners. Please come sit down with the rest of us. We have a great deal to talk over.”

  They sat around one of the small tables next to the star portals, and Esteban described the circumstances they would return to on Earth.

  “The news of the Genesis effect created…shall we say, a sensation,” J.T. said uncomfortably.

  In all the years Jim had known J.T. Esteban, he had never seen him lose his composure. Anything and everything, no matter how strange, no matter the stress, he had always taken easily, even phlegmatically, in his stride. Jim had read the reports of some of his missions. Esteban had come up against extraordinarily challenging events, and he had prevailed. To see him so agitated about Genesis disturbed Jim more than anything the younger Starfleet officer could tell him.

  “Of course it did,” David said. “That’s sort of the point, isn’t it? We’ve made possible the elimination of poverty. We’ve made the reasons for war completely untenable—”

  “You’ve created a device that could destroy the galaxy. That’s what our adversaries perceive, not universal peace and plenty. They have demanded multilateral parity—”

  “You mean they want Genesis, too,” Carol said.

  “Precisely.”

  “Why don’t you give it to them?” David said.

  “David!” Jim said, shocked. “We didn’t just go through—the last few days—so we could turn Genesis over to an enemy power. Your friends didn’t die resisting Khan so you could hand over the discovery to the next person who demanded it.”

  “That was different,” David said. “Khan wanted it for revenge. Revenge against you.”

  Jim scowled, but did not reply to the jab.

  “I’m not talking about giving it to every crazy who comes along,” David said. “I’m talking about making Genesis openly available for transforming lifeless worlds.”

  “That is absolutely outside the realm of possibility,” J.T. said.

  “But that’s what we made it for!”

  “My dear boy,” J.T. said.

  Jim winced, seeing David bristle.

  “My dear boy,” J.T. said, “we can’t give it to anyone else. That would be too dangerous.”

  “The Federation is the only organization with the wisdom to decide on its use?” Carol said dryly.

  “I’m glad you understand Starfleet’s—the Federation’s—position, Doctor Marcus,” J.T. said, missing the irony the same way he always missed jokes.

  “Oh, I understand it, all right,” Carol said. “That doesn’t mean that I accept it.”

  “I knew it!” David shouted. “You just can’t keep your hands off any discovery, can you? You have to grab it and hoard it and twist it until you can figure out a way to use it for destruction!”

  “David, relax,” Jim said.

  “We would hardly have to do much figuring, now, would we?” Esteban said. “The evidence for the destructive power of Genesis is its first deployment. It completely recreated the substance of the Mutara Nebula, a volume of space some hundred astronomical units in radius. It destroyed Reliant and all the people on board. It nearly destroyed the Enterprise, and it did cause the death of—”

  “Indirectly,” Jim Kirk snapped. “We were involved in hostilities—”

  “Because of Genesis!”

  “Not entirely,” Jim said. David was right: Khan had intended to use Genesis to wreak revenge upon James Kirk. But he had stumbled upon the project by chance, then turned it to his purposes. He had succeeded better than he could have known.

  “You’re hardly being fair, Captain,” Carol said. “The Genesis device was obviously never meant—in any form—to go off inside a ship. That particular device was never intended to go off within a nebula.”

  “But that’s precisely my point, Doctor! After all that’s happened, how can you argue that the device cannot be an instrument of terrorism?”

  “But if everybody has it there isn’t any need for terrorism!” David said.

  Carol was touched by David’s naivete, Jim was surprised by it, and J.T. thought he was being deliberately, perhaps even maliciously, dense.

  “Your discovery may eliminate poverty. But it’ll hardly change the natures of sentient beings. It won’t eliminate greed or lust for power or simple error, and it most certainly won’t eliminate ideology. The drive to convert people’s minds and hearts has caused more grief, more suffering, more loss of life than any desire for property, riches, or even the necessities of survival.”

  “Very eloquent, Captain,” David said sarcastically. “I take it you mean our ideology requires us to pervert Genesis into a weapon before anybody else gets a chance to?”

  “It’s hardly productive to ascribe malicious motives to everybody who disagrees with you, David,” Jim said sharply.

  “What has to be done with Genesis isn’t up to me to say,” J.T. said. “Or to any of us.”

  “You’re entitled to your opinion,” Carol said.

  David jumped to his feet. “I always said the military’d try to take Genesis away from us! I suppose if I try to call the Federation Science Network in on this, you’ll throw me in the brig!”

  “Sit down and shut up, David,” Jim said. “If anybody gets thrown in the brig on this ship, it’ll be by me. And you’re making it mighty tempting to send you to bed without your supper.”

  David glared at him with a sudden flare of resentment that surprised Jim completely.

  “Try it and see how far you get!” David glared at Kirk, then at Esteban. “I don’t see any point in continuing this discussion.” He stalked away.

  “Come back here, David,” Jim said.

  “Do you think you can make me? You and who else?” He strode from the lounge.

  Jim started to rise.

  Carol put one hand on his arm.

  “Let him go, Jim. He’ll be all right when he cools down.” She smiled. “That’s another way he’s like you.”

  “I was never that hot-headed!”

  Carol looked at him askance. Jim reluctantly sat down again.

  He realized that J.T. was watching them with both curiosity and confusion. He deserved at least some explanation.

  “David is my son, as well as Carol’s,” he said.

  “Oh,” J.T. said. “Er…I didn’t realize you had any children.”

  Neither did I, Jim thought,
but what he said out loud was, “Just the one.”

  “How did we get off on this track, anyway?” J.T. said. “What I asked you here to tell you is that Grissom has been ordered to the Mutara sector to make a complete survey of the Genesis world. We can hardly discuss it, with our allies or with our adversaries, unless we know more about the effect and its consequences. Doctor Marcus, I’ve been directed to transfer you to my ship.”

  “What?” Carol said.

  “Obviously, we need you to supervise the observations—”

  “Forget it,” Carol said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What the hell do you think I am? ‘Transfer’ me? Like a crate of supplies? Do you think I’m a robot?”

  “I’m sorry, Doctor. I don’t follow you at all.”

  “Six people died on Spacelab. I was responsible for them—and they were my friends! I owe them. At the very least I owe them the courtesy of telling their families what happened!”

  “Their families know of the tragedy…”

  “What did you do—send telegrams? My gods!”

  “I feel sure things were handled with more…more delicacy than you suspect.”

  “I don’t care,” Carol said. “I’m not going back to Genesis, not now. I won’t discuss it any further.”

  “But—”

  “The subject is closed.”

  She stood abruptly and strode from the lounge, leaving Jim and J.T. together in awkward silence.

  “Well,” J.T. said finally, “I didn’t handle either one of them very well, did I? Maybe if I ask her again a little later—?”

  “I wouldn’t advise it,” Jim said.

  Valkris knelt on the floor of her cabin, meditating. The low gravity of the mercenary’s ship made the discipline very difficult. Remaining in one position for a great length of time required no strength of will, where gravity put little stress on the body.

  Meditation was one of the few ways she had of passing the time during the miserable boredom of space travel when one was merely a passenger, a lone passenger at that. She had been more accustomed to flying her own ship, before her family fell upon hard times.

  This mission would rebuild her family’s fortune and its honor. She resisted unseemly pride: it was merely her duty to repair the damage done to all their reputations by the actions of her older brother. Kiosan had never forgiven their family for choosing Valkris, rather than him, to lead them.

  In his despair and envy he set out to prove how spectacularly correct the family had been to overlook him. He reneged on all the vows he had made when he came of age. He put aside his veil and showed his face to the world. He addicted himself to pleasure, and he showed no desire to change. Valkris offered him the opportunity to return to the family three times, and even a fourth, though the fourth offer strained her sense of aesthetics. Not only did he refuse—he dared her to break her own word and join him.

  Valkris had disowned her brother with a regret so intense that to this moment she felt the pain. But Kiosan’s actions had sent their family’s reputation and merit into an inexorable slide that could not be reversed unless he repented or she released him. So Valkris had set him free. To all her other blood kin, he was dead. But he was still very much alive to Valkris, and when she thought of him, as she often did, she wished him well in his freedom and envied him more than a little.

  She had made vows, too. Every member of each of the great families took the vows upon coming of age. Despite the example of her older brother, Valkris was unable to break them. Every action she had taken since accepting her position had been intended to benefit the family. She had never fled a duel. She had never even lost a duel, though she bore scars from wounds that would have proven her honor even had she yielded to the opponent who inflicted them. Because of her reputation for ferocious tenacity, she had not been challenged in some years. Valkris did not fight for an afternoon’s entertainment. She had buried more opponents than she had permitted to be helped from the field.

  It was good that the family would recover from Kiosan’s foolishness. It was better that it was Valkris who designed the recovery, and who would carry it out.

  She extended both her hands and clenched her fingers into fists, feeling the tension and the strength in her long, strong muscles. She rose smoothly to her feet and made a hand signal before the sensor of the intercom.

  “Yes?” the captain of the mercenary vessel said after a moment.

  “The gravity in my cabin is very weak. I require it to be increased.”

  “There’s a matter of the extra fuel to run the grav generators.”

  “You will not lose by acceding to my requests, Captain,” Valkris said. She was tired enough of his pettiness to consider making him a challenge. She resisted the unworthy impulse. She could gain no honor by vanquishing such a creature. He had no style.

  “Very well,” the captain said disagreeably.

  A short time later the gravity in Valkris’ cabin began to increase. She knelt again and composed herself for meditation. When the force increased well beyond that of her homeworld, she simply smiled and set herself to find the discipline she had been seeking.

  Saavik did her work automatically. She had practiced on the bridge of the Enterprise so often that the responses came without her conscious thought. Any change, any anomaly, would call itself to her attention instantly. For the moment everything was normal—as normal as it could be for a half-crippled ship—so Saavik could think of other things.

  She thought about David, she thought about Mister Spock, and she thought about the strangeness of her life. Mister Spock had helped her transform herself from a starving, abandoned, illiterate child-thief into a polished, controlled, and well-educated Starfleet officer. Under most circumstances she was the very model of Vulcan propriety. That had been her goal, until her last conversation with Spock. “You must find your own path,” he had said. The wisdom of his words impressed her. He had told her she might find herself considering possibilities that she knew he would not approve. She should not, he said, dismiss them on that criterion alone. Instead, she should remain open to them.

  The path she had chosen last night led into the unexplored regions of her Romulan heritage. Spock would most certainly not have encouraged such a journey. For that reason Saavik found even more cause to admire his insight into her character and his own.

  Saavik thought about her life, she thought about Mister Spock, and she thought about—her thoughts kept coming back to—David.

  “Lieutenant Saavik.”

  “Yes, Admiral.” Saavik turned to face Admiral Kirk, who had just stepped onto the bridge with an unfamiliar officer: Captain Esteban of the Grissom, by his uniform and insignia.

  “J.T.,” Kirk said, “this is Lieutenant Saavik. Lieutenant, Captain Esteban is on a survey trip to Genesis. He needs someone along who has a scientific background, and who witnessed the creation of the world. Doctor Marcus has declined to go. Would you care to volunteer?”

  “Aye, Admiral,” she said. She thought of David. The words tasted bitter. She turned back to her console.

  Chapel paused at McCoy’s bedside and felt his forehead again. His fever had receded, and she had heard him move restlessly as if he were about to wake up.

  “Chris?”

  “Yes, Leonard.” She tried to keep the ragged wariness from her voice, but the pain still showed. Whatever his excuse for saying a very Vulcan thing to her in a creditable imitation of Spock’s voice, it had still hurt her badly.

  “What’s going on? What happened?”

  “What do you mean, Leonard? Since you spoke to me last? Since last night? Since we left Spacedock? What’s the matter with you?”

  “I…I don’t know. Everything seems so strange.”

  She felt concerned enough about him to turn on the medical sensors above his bed. She had held off doing so earlier because she knew what he would say if he awoke to find them quietly talking to themselves over his head.

  “What’re yo
u doing? I’m not sick. I don’t need those damned blinkenlightzen interrupting my sleep.”

  Chris managed to laugh. “That’s more like it,” she said. She watched the sensors through a couple of cycles. Nothing seemed amiss. Leonard’s temperature had dropped to normal. His body chemistry showed no evidence of the metabolic breakdown products of alcohol. But if he had not been drunk last night…what had affected him? She turned off the sensors.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Eight hundred hours.”

  “Good lord.”

  Without comment, Chris let him sit up. If he was well enough to help, all the better.

  “Leonard,” she said.

  “Hm?”

  “Why did you say that to me?”

  “What?”

  “A little while ago you woke up, and you said, ‘Vulcans do not love.’ ”

  “My gods, Chris,” he said, shocked. “Did I? I’m sorry. All night I’ve been having those horrible dreams where you can’t tell if they’re real or not. I can’t even remember anything about them except how frightening and how real they were. I guess I must have been dreaming…about Spock.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “I never would have said such a thing if I’d known what I was saying. Will you accept my apology?”

  “Yes,” she said. Wanting to forget about it as soon as possible, she changed the subject. “Are you well enough to go on duty? Someone has to accompany Carol Marcus to Spacelab. I think it should be one of us.”

  “Good gods—Jim isn’t going to let anybody go down there—!”

  He jumped out of bed. Chris caught him when he staggered and nearly fell.

  “I’m all right—just stood up too fast.”

  “Uh-huh.” She helped him sit on the edge of the bed. “You’re in no condition to leave the ship—especially since I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t be an ass, Leonard. You can stay here and rest under your own authority, or you can stay under Admiral Kirk’s orders. Your choice.”

  “I forbid you—” He stopped. “Sorry. Chris, I’ve already been down there—I’ve seen…what happened to Carol Marcus’s friends. Letting her see it would be cruel.”