“Jim,” McCoy said. He took Kirk by the shoulder and gripped it, shaking him gently, trying to pull him back out of despair. “Jim!”
Kirk recoiled from his help. He stared at him for a moment, hardly seeing him, hardly aware anymore of the reason he had come to this godforsaken spot in space. He knew that if he did surrender, he would sacrifice the lives of all his friends. And he realized, suddenly, that if he gave Kruge the opportunity to tap into the Enterprise’s Genesis records, the information would lead inevitably to Carol Marcus. Kruge might be bold, but he was not a fool; he could not threaten Carol directly. But Kirk would be a fool to discount the Empire’s network of spies, assassins…and kidnappers.
“Mister Sulu…” he said. “What is the crew complement of Commander Kruge’s ship?”
“It’s about—” Sulu had been thinking of a smart and angry kid, a young man on the brink of realizing an enormous potential, his life drained out into the world he had tried to make. Sulu forced his voice to be steady; he forced his attention to the question he had been asked. “A dozen, officers and crew.”
“And some are on the planet….” Kirk said. He faced his friends, who had risked so much to accompany him. “I swear to you,” he said, “we’re not finished yet.”
“We never have been, Jim,” McCoy said.
“Sulu, you and Bones to the transporter room. Scott, Chekov, with me. We have a job to do.” He slapped the comm control. “Enterprise to Commander, Klingon fighter. Stand by to board this ship on my signal.”
“No tricks, Kirk,” Kruge replied. “You have one minute.”
“No tricks,” Kirk said. “I’m…looking forward to meeting you. Kirk out.”
Kirk gathered with Chekov and Scott at the science officer’s station and opened a voice and optical channel direct to the computer.
“Computer, this is Admiral James T. Kirk. Request security access.”
He experienced a moment of apprehension that Starfleet might have blocked the deepest levels of the computer. A bright light flashed in his eyes, taking a pattern for a retina scan. No: no one in Starfleet had expected him to commit an act as outrageous and absurd as stealing his own ship. The order to him to sit still and do nothing, though it would cost the life of Leonard McCoy, was deemed to be sufficient protection for the Enterprise. They had not bothered to protect the ship in any more subtle way. If they had, no doubt the ship’s computer would have begun shouting “Thief, thief!” the moment he stepped on board.
“Identity confirmed,” the computer said.
“Computer…” Kirk said. He took a deep breath, and continued without pause. “Destruct sequence one. Code one, one-A…”
As Kirk recited the complex code, he ignored Scott’s stunned glance. The only way he was going to get through this was by keeping it at a distance, by making the decision and carrying it out with no second-guessing.
Kirk finished his part of the process and stood aside.
Chekov stepped forward, his expressive face somber.
“Computer,” he said slowly, “this is Commander Pavel Andreievich Chekov, acting science officer.”
The computer scanned Chekov’s dark eyes and recognized him.
Was it Kirk’s imagination, or did the identification take longer for Chekov than it had for Kirk? It must be his apprehension and his nerves and his sense of the clock ticking away that last minute. The computer was merely a machine, a machine with a human voice and some decision-making capabilities, but it was not designed to be self-aware. It could not possess intimations of mortality. It would not delay identifying Chekov to give itself a few more moments of existence, nor would the injuries begun by Kirk’s code slow it in any fashion perceptible to a human being. The end would be quick and clean, a matter of microseconds.
“Destruct sequence two, code one, one-A, one-B…”
The computer was merely a machine; the ship was merely a machine.
“Mister Scott,” Kirk said, his voice absolutely level.
“Admiral—” Scott said in protest.
“Mister Scott—!”
Scott could stop the sequence. Kirk experienced a mad moment when he hoped the engineer would do just that.
Scott looked away, faced the computer’s optical scan, and identified himself. “Computer, this is Commander Montgomery Scott, chief engineering officer.” The light flashed white, bringing the lines of strain on his face into sharp relief.
“Identification verified.”
“Destruct sequence three, code one-B, two-B, three…”
“Destruct sequence completed and engaged. Awaiting final code for one-minute countdown.”
If the computer were merely a machine, if the ship were merely a machine, how could Jim Kirk perceive grief in its voice? It was just that, he knew: his perception, not objective reality. He and Spock had had many arguments about the difference between the two. They had come to no agreement, no conclusions.
The last word remained James Kirk’s.
“Code zero,” he said. “Zero, zero destruct zero…”
This time there was no delay.
“One minute,” the computer said. “Fifty-nine seconds. Fifty-eight seconds. Fifty-seven seconds…”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jim Kirk said angrily.
On the bridge of the fighter, Torg felt his commander’s gaze raking him and the heavily armed boarding party. Torg understood the compliment his commander offered him by permitting him to lead the force. Maltz alone would remain behind with Kruge. Admiring his commander’s restraint, Torg wondered if he himself, in Kruge’s position, would have the strength to let another lead the assault. By forgoing that perquisite, Kruge would gain the more important prize of seeing Kirk brought to him, thoroughly beaten, a prisoner.
Torg felt some slight apprehension about the size of his force relative to the crew of a ship such as the Enterprise. He wondered if the two remaining hostages would truly secure the submissive behavior of the enemy. He knew that if the positions were reversed, Kruge would sacrifice two hostages without hesitation.
“They do outnumber us, my lord—” Torg thought to point out that even a few rebels among the crew could make significant trouble.
His crest flaring, Kruge turned to him. “We are Klingons! When you have taken the ship, when you control it, I will transfer my flag to it and we will take Genesis from their own memory banks!”
“Yes, my lord,” Torg said. Kruge delivered into his hands the disposition of any rebels. Torg would deliver the ship into the hands of his commander.
“To the transport room,” Kruge said. He saluted Torg. “Success!”
The intense thrill of excitement nearly overwhelmed the younger officer. No one had ever spoken to him in such a high phase of the language before.
“Success!” he replied. As he ordered his team into formation and away he heard Kruge contact the Federation admiral again. The conversation followed him via the ship’s speakers.
“Kirk, your time runs out. Report!”
“Kirk to Commander Kruge. We are energizing transporter beam…”
Torg arranged his party in a wedge, with himself at the apex.
“Transporter, stand by,” Kruge said.
“Ready, my lord.” Torg grasped the stock of an assault gun, a blaster, the weapon he particularly favored over a phaser.
“…Now.”
The beam spun Torg into a whirlwind that swept him away.
As his body reformed aboard the Enterprise, he held his weapon at the ready. But no rebels waited to resist him.
No one waited at all. Over the speakers, a soft and rhythmic voice kept the ship’s time. An alien custom, no doubt, as inexplicable and distracting as most alien customs.
“Forty-one seconds. Forty seconds…”
Torg descended from the transporter platform. He was prepared for an attack, even more than a surrender. He was not prepared for…nothing.
He led his force from the transporter room and toward the bridge. B
y the time he reached it, the eerie silence beneath the computer voice had drawn his nerves as taut as his grip on his blaster.
The bridge, too, lay empty and quiet.
“Twenty-two seconds. Twenty-one seconds…”
Torg drew out his communicator.
“It’s a trap,” one of the team members said. The fear in his voice infected every one of them.
Torg silenced him with a poisonous glance that promised severe discipline when the time was right. He opened a channel to his commander.
“My lord, the ship appears to be…deserted.”
“How can this be?” Kruge said. “They are hiding!”
“Perhaps, sir. But the bridge appears to be run by computer. It is the only thing speaking.”
“What? Transmit!”
Torg aimed the directional microphone at the computer speaker, which continued its rhythmic chant. “Six seconds. Five seconds…”
“Transport! Maltz, quickly, lock onto them—!”
The alarm in Kruge’s voice terrified Torg, but he had no time to react.
“Two seconds. One second.”
The transport beam trembled at the edge of his perceptions—
“Zero,” the computer said, very softly.
—but it reached him too late.
Saavik lay on the cold, rocky hillside. The effects of the stun beams were fading, yet she was barely able to move. The madness had possessed her, and now she must pay its price. Her rage had drained her of strength. David’s death had drained her of will. His blood stained her hands.
She forced herself to rise. The young Vulcan watched her, curious and impassive. His form was that of Spock, but the Spock she had known had never been indifferent to exhaustion or to grief. She stood up. David’s body was only a few paces away.
The sergeant snapped an order at her. She understood its sense, but chose to ignore it. The crew member she had tried to throttle leaped forward and struck her, knocking her down. Even the sound of his laughter was not enough to anger her now.
She staggered back up. The guard flung her to the ground again. Saavik lay still for a moment, digging her fingers into the cold earth, feeling the faint vibrations of the disintegrating world.
She pushed herself to her feet for a third time. The guard clenched his fist. But before he could attack, the sergeant grabbed his arm. The two glared at each other. The sergeant won the contest. Neither moved as Saavik took the few steps to David’s body and knelt beside him. She put her hand to his pallid cheek.
When David was near, she had always been aware of the easy and excitable glow of his mind. Now it had completely dissolved. He was gone. All she could ever do for him was watch his body through the night, as she had watched Peter and as she had watched Spock. On the Enterprise the ritual had been only that. But on this world his body was vulnerable to predators, indigenous or alien.
Saavik gazed into the twilight. If the Enterprise was in standard orbit, she should be able to locate it as a point of light in the sky. Working out the equations in her head forced her to collect her mind and concentrate her attention. When she was done she felt unreasonably pleased with herself.
Am I becoming irrational? she wondered. Under these conditions, feeling pleased at anything, much less at the solution of such a simple process, must surely be irrational.
She looked for the Enterprise in the spot she had calculated it should be.
She found the moving point of light.
And then—
The transporter beam ripped James Kirk from his ship and reformed him on the surface of Genesis. One after the other, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov, and Scott appeared around him, safe. They all waited, phasers drawn, prepared for pursuit. They had timed their escape closely. The enemy boarding party could have perceived the last glint of their transporter beam, could have tracked them by the console settings, and could have followed them. But they remained alone.
The air was cold and damp and heavy with twilight. All around, a hundred paces in all directions, iron-gray trees reached into the air, then twisted down, twining around each other like gigantic vines. They formed a wide circle around an area clear of trees but choked with tangled, spiny bushes. He took a step toward the forest, where he and his friends could find concealment, and where he would not be able to see the sky. But the thorns ripped into his clothing and hooked into his hands. The scratches burned as if they had been touched with acid. Jim stopped.
Unwillingly, he looked up.
Stars pricked the limpid royal blue with points of light. This system contained only a single planet and no moon. All its sky’s stars should be fixed, never changing their relationship to one another. But one, shining the dull silver of reflected light, moved gracefully across the starfield on its own unique path.
Slowly and delicately it began to glow. Its color changed from silver to gold. Then, with shocking abruptness, it exploded to intense blue-white. The point of motion expanded to a blazing, flaming disk, a sphere, a new sun that blotted out the stars.
Jim felt, or imagined, the radiation on his face, a brief burst of heat and illumination as matter and antimatter met and joined in mutual annihilation.
The Enterprise arced brilliantly from its orbit. For an instant it was a comet, but the gravity of the new world caught it and held it and drew it in. It would never again curve boldly close to the incandescent surface of a sun, never again depart the gentle harbor of Earth to sail into the unknown. The gravity of Genesis turned the dying ship from a comet to a falling star. It spun downward, trailing sparks and cinders and glowing debris. It touched the atmosphere, and it flared more brightly.
Just as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished. One moment the Enterprise was a glorious blaze, and the next the sky rose black and empty.
It seemed impossible that the stars should remain in their same pattern, for even fixed stars changed after an eternity.
“My gods, Bones…” he whispered. “What have I done?”
“What you had to do,” McCoy said harshly, his voice only partly his own. “What you’ve always done: turned death into a fighting chance to live.” He faced Jim squarely and grasped his upper arms. “Do you hear me, Jim?”
Jim stared at him, still seeing a flash of the afterimage of the new falling star, still feeling the death of his ship like sunlight searing his face. He took a deep breath. He nodded.
The tricorder Sulu carried had been reacting to the new world since the moment they appeared, but Sulu had barely heard it. Now it forced itself on his attention.
“Sir, the planet’s core readings are extremely unstable, and they’re changing rapidly—”
Kirk wrenched his attention to the immediate threat. “Any life signs?”
“Close.” He scanned with the tricorder. “There.”
“Come on!”
Kirk strode through the clearing toward the distorted trees. This time the thorns seemed to part for his passing.
The holographic viewer, which had blazed with light, hung dark and flat; the port looked out on empty space.
Kruge slowly realized how many blank seconds had passed during which he had failed to act, or even to react. The great ship which he had held in thrall had dissolved in his grasp.
Confused and uncertain, Maltz waited by the transporter controls. He had directed the beam to the landing party, touched them, held them—then nothing remained on which to lock.
Kruge was unable to believe what the alien admiral must have done.
“My lord,” Maltz said hesitantly, “what are your orders?”
My orders? Kruge thought. Do I retain the right to give orders? I underestimated him—a human being! He did the one thing I did not anticipate, the one thing I discounted. The one thing I would have done in his position.
“He destroyed himself,” Kruge said aloud.
“Sir, may I—?”
If I had known one of the prisoners was his son—if I had interrogated them before sacrificing one—! Kruge flailed himself with his own h
umiliation. Killing Kirk’s son was stupid! It made Kirk willing to die!
“We still have two prisoners, sir,” Maltz said with transparent concern, for he had received no real response from his commander, no acknowledgment of his presence or of their predicament, since the enemy ship exploded and died. “Perhaps their information—”
Kruge turned on him angrily. “They are useless! It was Kirk I needed, and I let him slip away.”
“But surely our mission has not failed!” Maltz exclaimed. They had come seeking Genesis; they retained two hostages who had some knowledge of it, perhaps enough to reproduce it. By his cowardly suicide, Kirk had abandoned them to their captors. Surely Kruge would not let one setback destroy him because of pride….
“Our mission is over,” Kruge said. “I have failed. A human has been bolder and more ruthless than I….” His eyes were empty. “That…is the real dishonor.”
—and then, the point of light that was the Enterprise flared into a nova and scattered itself across the sky.
Saavik gasped.
The ship vanished.
She felt the loss of other lives and dreams much more sharply than she felt the certainty of her own impending death. That did not seem to matter much anymore. It would have very little effect on the universe.
Spock cried out violently, foretelling an inevitable quaking of the planet. The night rumbled; the ground shook. In the distance, Genesis echoed Spock’s agony. Beyond the forest, a fault sundered the plain, splitting it into halves, then ramming the halves one against the other. One edge rose like an ocean wave, overwhelming and crushing the other, which subsided beneath it. The sheer faces of stone ground against each other with the power to form mountains.
A wash of illumination flooded ground and sky. A brilliant aurora echoed the earthquake lights, and ozone sharpened the air.
The planet was dying, as the Enterprise had died, as every person Saavik had ever cared about had died, as she expected, soon, to die.
Her guards turned away to gaze into the looming, sparkling curtains of the aurora. Even above the rumblings of the quake, Saavik could hear the electric sizzle of the auroral discharge. The guards watched and marveled. The under-tones of their voices revealed fear.
Duty, Honor, Redemption Page 43
