STAR TREK: TOS #7 - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

by Vonda N. McIntyre (Novelization)

  “Impulse engines,” McCoy said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, son, I expect it means the chase is on.”

  “I’m going up there.”

  “To the bridge? No, you’re not. You’d just be in the way. Best stay here, David.”

  “Dammit—there must be something I can do.”

  “There isn’t,” McCoy said. “Nor anything I can do. All we can do is wait for them to start shooting at each other, and wish we could keep them from doing it. That’s the trouble with this job.”

  Khan Singh chuckled at the pitiful attempt of the Enterprise to evade him. Reliant, accelerating under full impulse power, streaked out of orbit after James Kirk’s crippled ship.

  “So,” he said to Joachim. “They are not so wounded as they wished us to believe. The hunt will be better than I thought, my friend.”

  Joachim displayed a long-range scan of their course, showing the Enterprise and the great opaque cloud of the nebula ahead.

  “My lord, we will lose our advantage if we follow them into the dust. I beg you—”

  Khan cut him off. Joachim was beginning to sound like a traitor. Khan decided to give him one last chance.

  “Rake the Enterprise,” he ordered.

  The phaser rippled outward, a long finger of dense light. It streaked along the side of the Enterprise’s starboard engine nacelle. The starship heeled over and began to tumble, spiraling on its headlong course.

  The Enterprise lurched; its artificial gravity flexed, trembled, and finally steadied. McCoy closed his eyes a moment, till he regained his balance.

  Action commenced, he thought bitterly.

  [187] Chekov gave an inarticulate cry and sat up abruptly, his eyes wild.

  “Take it easy,” McCoy said.

  “I must help Captain—”

  “No. Listen to me, Pavel. You’ve been through a hell of a lot. You haven’t any strength, and you haven’t any equilibrium.”

  “But—”

  “You can lie down willingly, or you can lie down sedated. Which will it be?”

  Pavel tried again to get up. He nearly passed out. McCoy caught him and eased him back on the bed. The young Russian turned deathly pale.

  “Now will you stay put?”

  Chekov nodded slightly without opening his eyes.

  The ship shuddered again. Coming out of the instrument room where she had been helping Chris Chapel, Carol Marcus staggered, then recovered her balance. The flower garland slipped from her hair. She caught it, stared at it as if she had never seen it before, and carefully laid it aside.

  “Dr. McCoy, I can’t just sit here. I keep thinking about—Please, give me something to do.”

  “Like I was tellin’ David,” McCoy said grimly, “there isn’t much to do. ...” He realized how desperate she was to stay occupied. “But you can help me get the surgery ready. I’m expecting customers.”

  Marcus paled, but she did not back off.

  If what she and the kid have been through in the last couple of days didn’t break them, I guess nothing will, McCoy thought.

  Marcus glanced around sick bay.

  “Where is David?” she said.

  “I don’t know—he was here a minute ago.”

  “Ion concentration increasing,” Mr. Spock said. “Approximately two minutes to sensor overload and shield shutdown.”

  [188] The ship plowed on. Encountering great quantities of ionized dust and gases, the shields began to re-radiate energy in the visual spectrum. The viewscreen picked it up, sparkling and shimmering. The crisp rustle of static rose over the low hum of conversation and information on the bridge. A tang of ozone filled the air.

  Reliant fired again. The Enterprise shuddered. If the shields were not quite steady, at least they held.

  “Reliant is closing fast,” Saavik said.

  Directly ahead, the nebula’s core raged.

  “They just don’t want us going in there,” Kirk said, nodding toward the viewscreen.

  “One minute,” Spock said.

  The turbo-lift doors slipped open, and David Marcus came onto the bridge.

  “Admiral, Reliant is decelerating.”

  “Uhura, patch me in.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Khan felt the power of the impulse engines slacken, then whisper into reverse thrust. The gap between Reliant and the Enterprise immediately widened.

  “Joachim, why are we decelerating?”

  “My lord, we daren’t follow them into the nebula. Our shields will fail—”

  “Khan, this is James Kirk.”

  Khan Singh leaped to his feet with a scream of surprise and anger. James Kirk—still alive!

  “We tried it your way, Khan. Are you game for a rematch?”

  Khan struggled to gain control over his rage.

  James Kirk began to laugh. “Superior intellect!” he said with contempt. “You’re a fool, Khan. A brutal, murderous, ridiculous fool.”

  “Full impulse power!” Khan’s voice was a growl.

  Joachim stood up and faced him. “My lord, no! You have everything! You have Genesis!” He looked Khan in the eye, and this time he did not flinch. Khan strode toward the helm, but Joachim blocked his way.

  [189] “My lord—” he said, pleading.

  “Full power!” Khan cried.

  He struck his friend with the violent strength of fury. The blow lifted Joachim completely off the deck and flung him over the control console. He fell hard against the forward bulkhead, lay still for a moment, then dragged himself to his feet.

  “Full power, damn you!” Khan grabbed the controls and slammed full power to the engines.

  Spock watched the tactical display. Reliant stopped decelerating and plunged forward at full impulse power.

  “Khan Singh does have at least one admirable quality,” the Vulcan said.

  “Oh?” said Kirk. “And what’s that?”

  “He is extremely consistent.” Spock glanced at the ionization readings. The ship had technically been within the nebula for some time. Now it approached a thick band of dust where pressure waves from the original exploding star met and interfered. The energy flux and mass concentration must disrupt the Enterprise’s operation.

  “They’re following us,” said Mr. Sulu.

  “Sensor overload ... mark.” Almost immediately, the image on the viewscreen broke up and shattered.

  Sulu piloted the ship blind through the cloud of gas and dust and energy.

  Joachim returned to his place at the helm, bewildered into obedience. In all the years that he had served his lord, all the times of witnessing the violence to which Khan was prone, Joachim had never himself been subject to that wrath. Khan had never assaulted him. Until now.

  Joachim had been in fights aplenty; he had even, in his younger days, lost a few. None had ever affected him like the single blow from Khan Singh. His hands shook on the controls, partly from humiliation and [190] partly from rage. He had sworn to follow Khan even to death. There was no room for compromise: he had put no conditions on his vow. No conditions for madness, no conditions for betrayal.

  Freedom was in Khan’s grasp; yet he was throwing it away. Joachim indeed felt betrayed.

  The Enterprise vanished into a thick projection of dust, a tendril of exploded matter from the pulsar at the nova’s center.

  “Follow it!” Khan said.

  Joachim held his tongue and obeyed.

  The viewscreen’s image dissolved into random colors, punctuated by the periodic flash of the pulsar’s electromagnetic field.

  “Tactical!” Khan cried.

  “Inoperative,” Joachim said without expression.

  “Raise the shields!”

  “Inoperative.” Joachim saw that the ship’s hull could not long withstand the stress of the high concentration of dust, not at the speed it was going. “Reducing speed,” he said coldly.

  He could feel Khan’s gaze burning into him, but this time Khan made no protest.


  The Enterprise broke through the worst of the dust; visuals and tacticals returned, but the shields were out completely. Sulu changed course, creeping through the nebula’s diffuse mass just outside the irregular boundary which would both hide the Enterprise and blind it.

  The Enterprise hovered outside the cloud and waited.

  “Here it comes,” Saavik said.

  Reliant plowed slowly through the dust. It would be blind for another few moments.

  “Phaser lock just blew, Admiral,” Mr. Sulu said.

  “Do your best, Mr. Sulu. Fire when ready.”

  Sulu believed he could hit the opposing ship, even at this range. Precisely, carefully, he aimed. A moment’s pause:

  [191] Fire—

  The magnetic bearings of a stabilizing gyro exploded, and the Enterprise lurched. The phasers beam went wide.

  Sulu muttered a curse and plunged the Enterprise back into the nebula as Reliant spotted them and fired. The photon torpedo just missed, but it expended its energy in the cloud, and a mass of charged particles and radiation slammed into them. He struggled to steady the ship.

  “Hold your course,” Kirk said. “Look sharp. ...”

  “At what?” Lieutenant Saavik murmured. She drew more power to the sensors, tightened the angle, and ran the input through enhancement.

  For an instant, the viewscreen cleared. Sulu started involuntarily—Reliant loomed on the screen: collision course!

  “Evasive starboard!” Kirk yelled.

  Too late.

  Reliant’s phaser blast hit the unshielded Enterprise dead-on. The power-surge baffles on the primary helm console failed completely. It carried a jolt of electricity straight through the controls. Half the instruments blew out. Sulu felt the voltage arc across his hands. It flung him back, arching his spine and shaking him like a great ferocious animal, and slammed him to the deck.

  Every muscle in Sulu’s body cramped into knots. He lurched over onto his face and tried to rise. He could not breathe. The pain from his seared hands shot through him, cold and hot and overwhelming.

  He lost consciousness.

  When Mr. Sulu fell, Saavik leaped to the helm, seeking out which operations still functioned and which had crashed.

  “Phaser bank one!” Kirk said. “Fire!”

  Saavik’s hands were an extension of the controls, her body was part of the ship itself.

  She fired.

  * * *

  [192] The Enterprise’s phaser beam sizzled across Reliant’s main hull, full force. The blast reverberated across the bridge. Power failed for a moment, and with it artificial gravity and all illumination. Khan gripped the armrests of the captain’s chair, holding himself steady, but through the darkness and the shrieks of tortured metal he heard his people cry out and fall.

  Joachim pitched forward over the helm controls.

  “Joachim!”

  The gravity flowed back, returning slowly to normal, and the lights glowed to a bare dimness.

  As Reliant plunged ahead, unpiloted and blind, Khan sprang to his old friend’s side. He lifted him as gently as he could. Joachim cried out in pain. Khan lowered him to the deck, supporting his shoulders. The jagged ends of broken bones ground together, and Joachim’s face was bloody and lacerated. He reached out, his fingers spread and searching.

  He could not see.

  Khan permitted the touch. He laid his hand over Joachim’s.

  “My lord. ...” Joachim whispered. “You proved ... yourself ... superior. ...”

  Khan could feel the life ebbing from his friend. For a moment, he experienced despair. His sight blurred: he tried to force away the tears, but they spilled unchecked down his face. This was what his hatred had bought—

  James Kirk would repay the price.

  “I shall avenge you,” Khan said to Joachim, his voice a growl.

  “I wished ... no ... revenge. ...”

  Khan laid his friend down carefully. He stood up, his fists clenched at his side.

  “I shall avenge you.”

  After taking the Enterprise’s phaser burst, Reliant shot away dead straight, without a maneuver. David Marcus thought the Enterprise had won. Yet there was [193] no elation from the bridge crew, only concentration on the scattery viewscreen, murmured interchanges of essential information, and tension over all, like a sound pitched just above the range of hearing.

  Kirk spoke into the intercom. “Get a medic up here! Stat!”

  David pulled himself out of his observer’s detachment and hurried to the side of the injured helm officer.

  Sulu was not breathing. His hands were badly burned, and his skin was clammy. David felt his throat for a pulse and got absolutely nothing.

  David Marcus was not a medical doctor. He knew some first aid, which he had never had to use. He took a deep breath. The air was heavy with the smell of burned plastic and vaporized metal.

  He tilted Sulu’s head back, opened his mouth, breathed four breaths into him, pressed the heels of his hands over the helm officer’s sternum, and compressed his chest rapidly fifteen times in a row. A breath, fifteen compressions. Sulu did not react, but David kept going. A breath, fifteen compressions.

  “What’s the damage, Scotty?” he heard Kirk say.

  For David, everything was peripheral except the life in his hands. The first rule of manual cardiopulmonary resuscitation was and always had been: Don’t stop. No matter what, don’t stop.

  A breath, fifteen compressions.

  “Admiral,” the engineer said, “I canna put the mains back on-line! The energizer’s burst; if I try to gi’ it to ye, ’twill go critical!”

  “Scotty, we’ve got to have main power! Get in there and fix it!”

  A breath, fifteen compressions. David’s shoulders and arms were beginning to ache.

  “It isna possible, sir!” Mr. Scott cried. “The radiation level is far too high; i’ ha’ already burned out the electronics o’ the repair robot, and if ye went in in a suit ’twould freeze for the same reason! A person unprotected wouldna last a minute!”

  [194] A breath, fifteen compressions. The ache in David’s shoulders crept slowly into pain. Sweat rolled down his forehead and stung in his eyes. He could not stop to wipe it away.

  “How long, Scotty?”

  “I canna say, sir. Decontamination is begun, but ’twill be a while—”

  A breath, fifteen compressions. David was breathing heavily himself now. He had not realized what lousy condition he was in. He had worked long hours on Spacelab, but it was essentially a sedentary job; the only exercise he had ever got was playing zero-gee handball with Zinaida, whom he had sometimes accused of using him as a moving wall to bounce the ball off of.

  Come on, Sulu, he thought, give me a little help, man, please.

  A breath, fifteen compressions.

  The turbo-lift doors slid open, and a medical team hurried onto the bridge.

  “Hurry—up—you—guys—” David said.

  A medic vaulted down the stairs and knelt beside him.

  “Any reaction?”

  David shook his head. His sweat-damp hair plastered itself against his forehead.

  “Keep going,” the medic said. She drew a pressure-injector out of her bag, dialed it, and fitted a long, heavy needle to it. “I’m going to try epinephrine straight to the heart. When I tell you, get out of my way but keep breathing for him. Okay?”

  David could hardly see because of the sweat sparkling in his eyes. He nodded. The medic ripped Sulu’s shirt open, baring his chest. The fabric parted beneath David’s hands.

  “Okay. Now!”

  He moved quickly, sliding aside but continuing to breathe for the helm officer. What was the count for [195] artificial respiration? Fifteen per minute? He held Sulu’s head just beneath his jaw but still could feel no pulse.

  The medic plunged the needle down.

  The reaction was almost instantaneous. Sulu shuddered, and his clammy skin flushed. David felt a pulse, thready and fast. Sulu gasped. David d
id not know what to do, whether to stop or keep going.

  The medic took his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “You can stop now.”

  David stopped. He could barely raise his head. He was dripping with sweat and panting. But Sulu was breathing on his own.

  “Good work,” the medic said.

  “How is he?” Kirk said without taking his gaze off the viewscreen.

  “Can’t tell yet,” the medic said. “He’s alive, thanks to his friend here.”

  She flung out a stretcher. It rippled, straightened, solidified. David staggered to his feet and tried to help her get Sulu onto it. He was not a great deal of use in lifting, because his arms were so tired they had gone numb. But once Sulu was on the stretcher, David at least could guide it. While the medic started working on Sulu’s burns, David pushed the stretcher to the turbo-lift and down to sick bay.

  Pavel Chekov felt and heard the battle begin; he watched the flow of casualties start and increase. He considered himself responsible for everything that had happened. He tried to sit up, but Dr. McCoy had strapped him down—it was a safety precaution, not restraint, and as the ship rocked and shuddered around him he freed his arms and fumbled for the fastenings. Sick bay spun around him; he had to close his eyes again to get his balance.

  For a moment, he lay back. What possible use could he be on the bridge, half-crippled and sick?

  [196] Then they brought Mr. Sulu in. Dr. Chapel read his life signs grimly, looked at his hands, and cursed under her breath.

  Chekov ripped off the restraining straps and forced himself to stand. In the confusion, no one noticed him get up; or if they did, they did not try to make him lie down again.

  His hearing was still one-sided. At the entrance to sick bay, he lost his balance and kept from falling only by grabbing the doorjamb.

  Someone took him by the shoulder.

  “You’d better lie down again,” David Marcus said. Chekov remembered him vaguely and dimly from the painful haze of Regulus I.

  “I can’t,” Chekov said. “I must get to bridge—Mr. Sulu—”