Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (52 page)

“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.

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 interference 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.

“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. By 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.