“—Arming torpedoes!”
“Fire, Mister Scott!”
The torpedoes streaked toward the Klingon ship. It was as if their impact solidified the ship while simultaneously blasting a section of it away. The fighter tilted up and back with the momentum of the attack. It began to tumble.
“Good shooting, Scotty,” Kirk said.
“Aye. Those two hits should stop a horse, let alone a bird.”
“Shields up, Mister Chekov,” Kirk said.
“Aye, sir.” He accessed the automation center and tried to call up the shields.
Nothing happened.
“Sir,” he said in concern, “shields are unresponsive.”
Scott immediately turned to his controls, and Kirk turned to Scott.
“Scotty—?”
With a subvocal curse, Scott bent closer over his console. “The automation system’s overloaded. I dinna expect ye to take us into combat, ye know!”
On the smoke-clouded bridge of his wounded ship, Kruge stumbled over a dim shape and fell to his knees. He touched the shape in the darkness—
Warrigul.
His beast, which he had owned since he was a youth and Warrigul only a larva, lay dying. Ignoring the chaos of the damaged bridge, Kruge stroked the spines of Warrigul’s crest. His pet responded with a weak, whimpering growl, convulsed once, and relaxed into death.
Kruge rose slowly, his hands clenched at his sides.
Torg’s voice barely penetrated the white waves of rage that pounded in his ears.
“Sir—the cloaking device is destroyed!”
“Never mind!” Kruge shouted. There would be no more hiding from this Federation butcher. “Emergency power to the thrusters!”
“Yes, my lord.”
The lights on the bridge further dimmed as the thrusters drained the small ship’s power, but the tumbling slowed and ceased. The ship stabilized.
“Lateral thrust!”
Torg obeyed, bringing the ship around to face the Enterprise again.
“Stand by, weapons!”
Jim Kirk watched the Klingon craft come round to bear on his ship.
“The shields, Scotty!”
“I canna do it!”
“Ready torpedoes—” The order came too late. The enemy ship fired at nearly point-blank range. The Enterprise had neither time nor room to maneuver. “Torpedoes coming in!” Kirk cried, bracing himself.
The flare of the explosion sizzled through the sensors. The viewscreen flashed, then darkened. The ship bucked violently. Kirk lost his hold and fell. The illumination failed.
“Emergency power!”
The Enterprise responded valiantly, but the bridge lights returned at less than half intensity. McCoy helped Kirk struggle up.
“I’m all right, Bones.” He lunged back to his place. “Prepare to return fire! Mister Scott—transfer power to the phaser banks!”
“Oh, god, sir, I dinna think I can—”
“What’s wrong?”
“They’ve knocked out the damned automation center!” He smashed his fist against the console. “I ha’ no control over anythin’!”
“Mister Sulu!”
Sulu’s gesture of complete helplessness, and Chekov’s agitated shake of the head, sent Kirk sagging back into his chair.
“So…” he said softly. “We’re a sitting duck.”
He watched the enemy fighter probe slowly closer.
Kruge, in his turn, watched the silent, powerful Federation ship drift before him.
“Emergency power recharge,” Torg said, “forty percent…fifty percent. My lord, we are able to fire—”
Kruge raised his hand, halting Torg’s preparations for another salvo.
“Why hasn’t he finished us?” Kruge said. He suspected Kirk wanted to humiliate him first. “He outguns me ten to one, he has four hundred in crew, to my handful. Yet he sits there!”
“Perhaps he wishes to take you prisoner.”
Kruge scowled at Torg. “He knows I would die first.”
“My lord,” Maltz said, from the communications board, “the enemy commander wishes a truce to confer.”
“A truce!” Kruge’s training and better judgment restrained his wish to fire, provoke a response, and end the battle quickly and cleanly. “Put him on-screen,” he said more calmly, then, to Torg, “Study him well.”
The transmission from the Enterprise, enhanced and interpreted, formed Kirk’s three-dimensional image in the area in front of and slightly below Kruge’s command post.
“This is Admiral James T. Kirk, of the U.S.S. Enterprise.”
“Yes,” Kruge said, “the Genesis commander himself.”
“By violation of the treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, your presence here is an act of war. You have two minutes to surrender your crew and your vessel, or we will destroy you.”
Kruge delayed any reply to the arrogant demand. Kirk was neither ignorant nor a fool. He must know that officers of the Klingon Empire did not surrender. And no one with a reputation like his could be a fool. Was he trying to provoke another attack, so he could justify destroying his enemy or increase his valor in the defeat? Or was there something more?
“He’s hiding something,” Kruge said. “We may have dealt him a more serious blow than I thought.”
Torg looked at him intently, trying to trace his superior’s thoughts. “How can you tell that, my lord?”
“I trust my instincts,” Kruge said easily. He toggled on the transmitter. “Admiral Kirk, this is your opponent speaking. Do not lecture me about treaty violations, Admiral. The Federation, in creating an ultimate weapon, has turned itself into a gang of interstellar criminals. It is not I who will surrender. It is you.” He paused to let that sink in, then gambled all or nothing. “On the planet below, I have taken prisoner three members of the team that developed your doomsday weapon. If you do not surrender immediately, I will execute them. One at a time. They are enemies of galactic peace.”
Listening to the transmission with disbelief, Kirk pushed himself angrily from his chair. “Who is this? How dare you—!”
“Who I am is not important, Admiral. That I have them, is.” He smiled, baring his teeth. “I will let you speak to them.”
On the surface of Genesis, far below, the landing party listened via communicator to the battle and to the interchange between Kirk and Kruge. Saavik listened, too, buoyed by the appearance of the Enterprise, disturbed by its failure to instantly disable and capture the Klingon ship. A Klingon fighter was no match for a vessel of the Constellation class. Saavik could only conclude that Kirk had come back to Genesis before his ship was fully repaired. She glanced at Spock, who sat wrapped in his black cloak and in exhaustion that was nearly as palpable. The reports Grissom had sent back must have brought James Kirk here. She then glanced at James Kirk’s son, and saw the hope in David’s bruised face. She hoped, in her turn and for all three of them, that he would not be disappointed.
The Klingon commander snapped an order. The sergeant in charge of the landing party replied with a quick assent and motioned to his underlings. They dragged Saavik, David, and Spock to their feet. Spock staggered. His face showed hopeless pain. The planet’s agony, which came to him without warning and frequently—more and more frequently as the hours passed—tortured him brutally.
The sergeant thrust his communicator into Saavik’s face. His meaning was clear: she must speak. She tried to decide if it would be better to reassure Admiral Kirk that his son and his friend were alive, or if she should maintain her silence and by doing so withhold the Klingons’ proof that they had prisoners.
The sergeant said a single word and Saavik felt her arms being wrenched upward behind her back. She called on all her training. Though the leverage forced her on tiptoe, she neither winced nor cried out. She stared coldly at the sergeant.
He clenched the fingers of his free hand into a fist. Saavik did not flinch from him. He gazed at her steadily, then smiled very slightly and mad
e a silent motion toward David. The crew member restraining him twisted his arms pitilessly. David gasped. The sergeant prodded Saavik in the ribs. He did not need to be able to speak Standard to indicate that he would hurt either or both of her friends until she did his bidding. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She could not bear to bring them any more pain.
“Admiral,” she said, “this is Saavik.”
“Saavik—” Kirk hesitated. “Is…David with you?”
“Yes. He is. As is…someone else. A Vulcan scientist of your acquaintance.”
“This Vulcan—is he alive?”
“He is not himself,” Saavik said. “But he lives. He is subject to rapid aging, like this unstable planet.”
Before Kirk could answer, the sergeant turned to David and thrust the communicator at him.
“Hello, sir. It’s David.”
“David—” Kirk said. His relief caught in his voice, then he recovered himself. “Sorry I’m late,” he said.
“It’s okay. I should have known you’d come. But Saavik’s right—this planet is unstable. It’s going to destroy itself in a matter of hours.”
“David…” Kirk sounded shocked, and genuinely sorrowful for his son’s disappointment. “What went wrong?”
“I went wrong,” David said.
The silence stretched so long that Saavik wondered if the communication had been severed.
“David,” Kirk said, “I don’t understand.”
“I’m sorry, sir, it’s too complicated to explain right now. Just don’t surrender. Genesis doesn’t work! I can’t believe they’ll kill us for it—”
The sergeant snatched the communicator from David.
“David—!” Kirk shouted. But when David tried to reply, his captor wrenched him back so hard he nearly fainted. Saavik took one instinctive step toward him, but she, too, was restrained, and for the moment she had no way to resist.
The sergeant permitted them to listen to the remainder of Kruge’s conversation with Admiral Kirk.
“Your young friend is mistaken, Admiral,” Kruge said. His voice tightened with the emotions of anger and desire for revenge. “I meant what I said. And now, to show my intentions are sincere…I am going to kill one of my prisoners.”
“Wait!” Kirk cried. “Give me a chance—”
Saavik did not understand the order Kruge next gave to his sergeant—that is, she did not understand the words themselves, which were of a dialect she did not know. But the intent was terribly clear. The sergeant looked at Spock, at David, at Saavik.
His gaze and Saavik’s locked.
The sergeant had been vastly impressed by his captain’s offer of final honor to his gunner, and vastly horrified by the gunner’s inability to accept the offer and carry out the deed. He recognized in Saavik a prideful being. As Kruge had shown magnanimity to the gunner, the sergeant would show it to this young halfbreed Vulcan. He would give her the chance to maintain her honor at her death.
He drew his dagger. The toothed and recurved edges flashed in the piercing light of the sun. He raised it up; he offered it to her.
Saavik knew what he expected of her. She understood why he was doing it, and she even understood that it was meant as a courtesy.
But she had never taken any oath to follow his rules.
She raised her hands, preparing to grasp the ritual dagger. She could feel the attention of every member of the landing party. They were so fascinated, so impressed by their sergeant’s tact and taste, that they had nearly forgotten their other captives. Saavik would take the knife—then lay about her with it, distract them, cry “Run!” to her friends, and hope they had the wit to take the chance she offered them. With any luck at all she might escape, too, in the confusion, but that matter was quite secondary to her responsibility to David and to Spock.
She reached into herself to find the anger that had been building up for so long, the berserk rage that would give her a moment’s invincibility. The fantastically recurved blade of the knife twisted in her vision. Her attention focused to a point as coherent and powerful as a laser. She touched the haft of the knife.
“No!” David cried. He flung himself forward, breaking out of the inattentive hold, and plunged between Saavik and the sergeant.
It took Saavik a fatal instant to understand what had happened.
With a snarl of rage, the sergeant plunged the dagger into David’s chest.
“David, no—!”
David cried out and collapsed. Saavik went down with him, breaking his fall. She held him, trying to stanch the blood that pulsed between her fingers. She could not withdraw the knife, for it was designed to do far more damage coming out than going in. David grasped weakly at the hilt and Saavik pushed his hands away.
“David, lie still—”
If she could just have a moment to help him, a moment to try to meld her consciousness with his, she could give him some of her strength, some of her ability at controlling the body. She knew she could keep him alive.
“David, stop fighting me—”
He was very weak. He stared upward. She did not think he could see her. Her own vision blurred. He tried to speak. He failed. She struggled to make contact with him, to touch his mind, to save him.
“Help me!” she cried to the landing party. “Don’t you understand, you can never replicate Genesis without him!”
If any of them understood her, they did not believe her.
The Klingon commander did not rescind the death sentence he had ordered. Saavik felt David slipping away from her.
“David—”
He reached up. His hand was covered with blood. He touched her cheek.
“I love you,” he said. “And I wish…”
Saavik had to bend down to hear him, his voice was so weak.
“I wish we could have seen Vance’s dragons…”
“Oh, David,” Saavik whispered, “David, love, there are no dragons.”
Three of the landing party dragged her from him.
Saavik’s fury erupted without focus or plan. The madness took her. She flung herself backwards, turning. She clamped her hands around the throat of the nearest of her captors. He gagged and choked and clawed at her hands. She perceived the blows and shouts but they had no effect on her. She perceived the limpid hum of a phaser and felt the beam rake over her body. Her fingers tightened. The phaser whined at a higher pitch. Hands clawed at her, trying to break her grip, failing.
The phaser howled yet a third time. The sound penetrated Saavik’s blue-white rage, searing her mind from cerebrum to spinal cord.
She collapsed to the rocky ground and lost consciousness.
Eleven
Pale and tense, Jim Kirk pushed himself from the command seat. His fingernails dug into the armrests and he sought desperately for time. The channel from the surface of Genesis spun confused voices around him, but the Klingon commander smiled coolly from the viewscreen, impervious and confident.
“Commander!” Kirk shouted.
“My name,” his opponent said, “is Kruge. I think it is important, Admiral, that you know who will defeat you.”
“At least one of those prisoners is an unarmed civilian! The others are members of a scientific expedition. Scientific, Kruge!”
“ ‘Unarmed’?” Kruge chuckled. “Your unarmed civilian and your scientific expedition stand upon the surface of the most powerful weapon in the universe, which they have created!”
“Kruge, don’t do something you’ll regret!”
“You do not understand, Admiral Kirk. Since you doubt my sincerity, I must prove it to you. My order will not be rescinded.” He glanced aside and snapped a question to someone out of Kirk’s view.
Kirk heard the beginning of a reply.
A cry of agony and despair cut off the words.
“David!” Jim shouted. “Saavik!”
He could make out nothing but the sounds of struggle, anger, and confusion. The transmission jumped and buzzed—Kirk recognized the interfere
nce of a phaser beam, reacting with the communicator. He was shaking with helplessness. The uncertainty stretched on so long that he thought for an instant of rushing to the transporter room and beaming into…into whatever was happening on the surface of Genesis. But even in his desperation he knew that he would be too late.
Commander Kruge watched, harsh satisfaction on his face.
Finally the voice transmission from Genesis cleared to silence.
“I believe I have a message for you, Admiral,” Kruge said, and spoke a command to his landing party.
Again there was a delay. Jim could feel the sweat trickling down his sides. A voice came from Genesis, but it was one of impatient command in a dialect of Kruge’s people that Kirk had never even heard before.
“Saavik…David…” Kirk said.
“Admiral…”
Even when Saavik was angry—and Kirk had seen her angry, though she might have denied it—her voice was level and cool. But now it trembled, and it was full of grief.
“Admiral, David—” Her voice caught. “David is dead.”
Kirk plunged forward as if he could strangle Kruge over the distance and the vacuum that separated them by using the sheer force fury gave his will.
“Kruge, you spineless coward! You’ve killed—my—son!”
At first Kruge did not react, and then he closed his eyes slowly and opened them again, in an expression of triumph and satisfaction.
“I have two more prisoners, Admiral,” he said. “Do you wish to be the cause of their deaths, too? I will arrange that their fate come to them…somewhat more slowly.” He let that sink in. “Surrender your vessel!”
“All right, damn you!” Kirk cried. He sagged back. “All right.” He became aware of McCoy, at his side. “Give me a minute, to inform my crew.”
Kruge shrugged, magnanimity in his gesture. But his tone reeked of contempt. “I offer you two minutes, Admiral Kirk,” he said, enjoying the irony of turning James Kirk’s commands back upon him. “For you, and your gallant crew.”
His communication faded. Kirk sat staring at the viewscreen as the image scattered and reformed into space, stars, the great blue curve of Genesis below, and the marauding Klingon fighter.
Duty, Honor, Redemption Page 42
