XV
Spock was as close as he could come to expressing genuine anxiety.
“Where is the captain, Mr. Sulu?”
While the same question had been bedeviling the helmsman for some time now, he could provide only the same maddeningly uninformative response as previously.
“Our sensor array’s still down, sir. We can’t probe the interior of the other ship. I’ve been trying some workarounds, but even they went down suddenly. I can’t find him.”
The science officer frowned. “Suddenly? Suddenly ‘when,’ Mr. Sulu?”
The helmsman looked toward the command chair. “Just now, actually, sir. I was starting to make some progress, and everything just went—”
Spock didn’t wait for him to finish. “Divert all noncritical power to shields.”
“Shields, sir?” Sulu looked uncertain. “According to what I can see, they’re still working to finalize the restoration of their own systems over there. The only ones that I can see are running a hundred percent at the moment are life support and artificial gravity.”
“Shields up,” Spock tersely reiterated. “Now.”
From another station an ensign monitoring the referenced systems called across to the command chair. “Sir, our maximum capability is twenty-one percent, and that’s only if we drop all—”
“Do it, Mr. Bradley. Extrapolating from what Mr. Sulu says, I have the feeling that . . . Captain?”
Without preamble, the view forward of the black warship had been replaced by one of James Kirk. Standing straight but looking more than a little battered, he was edged to one side to reveal Khan standing beside him. The former prisoner held the business end of a phaser against the captain’s neck. Spock did not need higher resolution to tell him that the weapon was likely not set on stun.
“I’m going to make this very simple for you, Mr. Spock,” Khan told him softly.
“Captain.” There was almost a hint of emotion in Spock’s voice.
“Your crew,” Khan continued, “for my crew.”
Well behind Khan, Spock could make out Chief Engineer Scott and Dr. Carol Marcus. They appeared to be weaponless, though the Vulcan was coming to believe that where Khan was concerned it would not have made any difference if both the chief and the admiral’s daughter had been armed.
“You have betrayed us,” Spock said evenly. “The captain trusted you. Trusted you enough to make you an ally against the renegade Admiral Marcus.” Spock tried to peer deeper into the corners of the viewscreen image. “I see only Engineer Scott and Dr. Marcus behind you. Where is the admiral?”
“At peace,” Khan replied without hesitation. “And if we’re going to throw around the term ‘betrayal,’ I’m the one who should be outraged. I’m the one who was betrayed.” He nodded back in the direction of Scott. “Once the admiral and those around him had been dealt with, your man shot me. On the direct order of the same captain you claim made me his ally.”
Spock replied with equal coolness. “And would we now be in a different position if he had not? Would this exchange be taking place under different circumstances? Or was having you put down—inadequately, it would appear—merely a momentary interruption in your predetermined plan for regaining control of your crew once the admiral had been dealt with?”
There was a pause, and then Khan smiled. There was pleasure in it, but no amusement. “Oh, you are smart, Mr. Spock. It takes true intelligence to see beyond the immediate and into the future. Most men have thoughts only for the moment. It would be interesting to play chess with you.”
“Isn’t that what we are doing?” Spock shot back.
One of the game pieces chose that moment to speak up, as the dazed Kirk tried to pull away from Khan. “Listen to me, Spock! Don’t do—”
Khan cut Kirk off in mid-sentence with a blow from the butt of the phaser he was holding, dropping him to the deck. As the stunned Kirk struggled and failed to rise, Khan turned back to the vid pickup. It was evident he was tiring of games of any kind.
“No more discussions. No more meaningless, time-wasting banter. I’ve waited three hundred years. Give me my crew.”
Khan was brilliant, devious, and physically overpowering, but he was not omnipotent. If that were so, he would have known that one cannot hurry a Vulcan.
“Suppose I comply with your request,” Spock replied calmly, and not in the least intimidated. “What will you do when you get them?”
“Continue the work we were doing before we were banished.”
“Which is?” One eyebrow lifted quizzically.
“Making the world a better place.” There was not so much as a suggestion of irony in Khan’s reply.
“‘Better.’ Meaning, more like you,” Spock surmised.
Giving the lie to what he had said a moment earlier, Khan showed himself willing to continue the conversation . . . provided it might lead to a worthwhile conclusion on the part of a respected opponent.
“Would that be such a bad thing?”
“As I understand your position, and extrapolating from what I have subsequently learned about you, it would involve the mass genocide of all beings you found to be less than superior specimens. With you being the arbiter of such decisions, of course.”
Khan turned simultaneously wistful and philosophical. Or maybe he was just insane. “One must first destroy before they can create anew. There is no point in sowing fresh seed on a field thick with weeds.” His expression was almost sad. “Shall I destroy you, Mr. Spock, or will you give me what I want? Come: Here is an opportunity for you to demonstrate your own personal superiority. Not to mention simple good sense.”
Though the Vulcan term for it differed from that of the human, stalling was a tactic not unknown to the science officer. “We have no transporter capabilities.”
Khan favored him with a thin smile. “Fortunately, that is not a problem, as mine are perfectly functional.” He glanced to one side. “Dr. Marcus can personally attest to that. Drop your shields.”
“If I do so,” Spock responded, “I have no guarantee you will not kill the captain and destroy the Enterprise.”
“Ah, so it seems we are back to gaming again. As you like. Let’s play this out ‘logically.’ Firstly, I will kill your captain to demonstrate both my resolve and my seriousness. That will eliminate your first concern from the equation, as he will then be dead and no longer a factor in our discussion. As to your resolve, if it continues to hold firm, I will have no choice but to kill you and your entire crew. So you see, you can turn over my crew to me and subsequently trust me to let you live, or I can kill you and your colleagues and recover my crew afterwards. Whether you live or die, I will have my people back.”
“And yet,” Spock replied, “if you destroy the Enterprise, you destroy your own people as well.”
Khan’s smile widened. “You forget, Mr. Spock. Your crew requires a continuous supply of fresh air to survive. Mine, being frozen in stasis, demands only a minimal energy draw to remain as they are until such time as they can be properly revived. Each stasis pod is individually powered, so that even if one or two of my companions should be lost, the rest would survive until revivification.” He nodded in the general direction of the warship’s instrumentation.
“Obviously, obliterating the Enterprise in a paroxysm of destruction would risk my crew’s survivability. Do you still wonder why the former admiral Marcus desired it? In contrast, I will selectively target the life-support systems located in the vicinity of the engine nacelles. Once everyone aboard your ship has suffocated, I will walk over your cold corpses until I recover my people. Should a few of you manage to slip into EV suits, I will deal with those resourceful individuals one at a time.” For emphasis, he pointed the end of the phaser toward the dazed Kirk’s neck. “Game over. Now, shall we begin?”
Time was indeed up, Spock knew. Aware that he had done all he could, he looked toward the helm. “Lower shields, Mr. Sulu.”
“Mr. Spock, sir, are you sure that . . . ?”
“Now, if you please, Mr. Sulu.”
Exhaling heavily, the helmsman complied. Relevant instrumentation confirmed the execution of Spock’s command. Defeated murmuring rose from those on the bridge. No one could blame the science officer. He had tried his best to dissuade a creature who had proved remorseless as well as cunning.
Still on the viewscreen, Khan could be seen accessing a bridge display, scanning the now completely vulnerable Enterprise while he nodded to himself with satisfaction.
“A wise choice, Mr. Spock. I had a feeling that when all was said and done, you would do the rational thing. Decision making becomes so much easier when an individual’s choices are reduced to one.”
Drawing back his leg, he delivered a kick to the prone Kirk’s midsection that left him hardly able to inhale.
“I now can see that your weapons bay is filled with a variety of photon torpedoes. Including, interestingly, six dozen of an entirely new type.” His voice darkened. “If none of them are mine, Commander, I will know it. At which point there will be no more discussion—of anything.”
“Vulcans do not lie,” Spock replied solemnly. “You should know that. The ones to which you allude are indeed your torpedoes.”
Khan stared into the vid pickup a moment longer, as if trying to penetrate the science officer’s thoughts despite the space that separated their respective vessels. Then he nodded once, pleased. Activating the warship’s military-grade transporter system, Khan began retrieving the torpedoes and the precious cryopods they contained one by one.
Although Khan operated the applicable controls with superhuman speed and skill, it still took several moments to complete the multiple ship-to-ship transfer. As soon as all seventy-two torpedoes had been transported to the warship’s main cargo bay, Khan commenced a unit-by-unit deep probe utilizing the warship’s main sensor scan. It promptly revealed their interior specifications—and contents. After completing half a dozen of these, he appeared to relax ever so slightly.
“Thank you, Mr. Spock.”
“I have fulfilled your terms,” Spock told him stiffly. “Now fulfill mine.”
“Why not? It will make no difference, in the end.” Looking over at a revived Kirk, who was struggling to keep his balance, he spoke condescendingly. “Well, Kirk, it seems I have to return you to your crew, as mine has been returned to me.” Seated now in the warship’s command chair, he prepared to manipulate the available controls. “This isn’t a transporter room, but if one has a mastery of simple physics and general starship engineering, it’s not so very difficult to manage the reverse of what brought the three of you on board.”
As he rose weakly, Kirk felt a familiar sense of displacement take hold. The light swam before his eyes, shifting and changing colors. Nearby, similar dislocating swirls of luminance enveloped Dr. Marcus and Mr. Scott. Just out of reach, an indifferent Khan eyed Kirk speculatively as the captain began to vanish.
“After all,” Khan continued as he worked the relevant instrumentation, “no ship should go down without her captain.”
On board the Enterprise, silent alarms began to appear on Sulu’s readouts. A worried Sulu looked toward the command chair. “He’s locking phasers on us, sir!”
“Evasive maneuvers,” Spock snapped. “Full impulse—whatever we have.”
Deep within the Enterprise, a tripartite swirl of radiance and color shrank and solidified until three figures emerged from within them. It took a disoriented Kirk a moment to realize where Khan had sent them. They were in a holding cell in the ship’s brig—the very same one Khan had occupied while on board. Even a madman, it appeared, could have a sense of humor. Next to him, Carol Marcus looked about to collapse. As Kirk hurried to support her and keep her from falling, Scott rushed to the transparent barrier and began pounding on it. While it was doubtful the impact of his fists could be heard on the other side, his voice conveyed his exasperation quite clearly.
“Och, man,” he shouted at the guard on duty, “let us outta here now!”
The concussion that rocked the brig area along with the rest of the ship knocked all three of them off their feet.
Battered by a flurry of firepower, the Enterprise was driven toward Earth. Controlled by one man, the warship followed.
Even given the great warship’s deliberately simplified command and control system, it was still a remarkable feat of piloting on Khan’s behalf: operating the ship, pursuing, and engaging with weaponry all at the same time and all by himself. One could almost believe he might have surreptitiously planned for such a contingency in the designs and suggestions he had provided to the late Alexander Marcus’s Section 31.
“Shields at six percent!” Sulu barely managed to make himself heard above the screaming alarms and repeated explosions that filled the bridge.
In contrast to everyone around him, Spock was strangely calm even for a Vulcan caught in such dire circumstances. “The torpedoes: How much time, Lieutenant?”
The officer he had addressed checked a readout. “Twelve seconds, sir!”
Nodding once, the first officer leaned toward the command chair pickup. “Crew of the Enterprise, this is Commander Spock. All decks prepare for imminent proximity detonation.”
Freed from the brig by the duty guard as soon as everyone had recovered their balance, Kirk and Scott shouldered the injured form of Carol Marcus between them while they struggled toward the nearest turbolift. As they advanced as fast as they could, the voice of the ship’s science officer sounded its warning over multiple speakers.
The struggling chief made a face. “What the hell is he talking about? Proximity detonation? What detonation?”
As Kirk continued running, his eyes widened slightly. “The torpedoes. He armed the damn torpedoes.”
Beside him, Scott was disbelieving. “He couldna gotten away with such, Captain. Surely Khan would have checked them as soon as he got them on board the other ship?”
“As anxious as he was to get his crew back . . .” Kirk muttered. “No, you’re right, Scotty. But he’d have to scan them one at a time. Besides, who would be fool enough to try and arm one manually, right? A photon torpedo is always armed by the sending of an electronic code. Once on the warship, they and their potentially dangerous warheads would be immune to interference from outside, safe behind the warship’s shields. And if only one was manually armed . . .”
The chief engineer was nodding to himself. “Aye . . . then Khan would have to scan that one specifically to even suspect anything was amiss. One warhead a’tick-tocking out of seventy-two.” He shook his head in admiration at the science officer’s audacity. “I can see where to Mr. Spock those would be pretty good odds.”
“Game playing.” Kirk was nodding soberly to himself. “Even a superman should know better than to play chess with a Vulcan.”
On the bridge, Spock leaned back into the firm cushioning of the command chair. “Brace for impact,” he commanded evenly.
This is going to work, he told himself. It had to work. He had computed the probability of success very carefully before deciding to go ahead with the plan.
Even so, he was grateful that none of his colleagues could see how his fingers tightened ever so imperceptibly on the arms of the command chair.
Kirk’s supposition was correct—Spock had ordered Dr. McCoy to arm only a single warhead out of the seventy-two available in the hope that it would not be one that Khan would scan. Now it was inside the warship.
And upon detonation, there were no shields to dampen the force of its explosion, no external walls to absorb any flying fragments. The cargo bay took the full force of the blast. Anything within effective range of the discharge was blown apart.
Including the remaining seventy-one functional warheads that were mounted on the seventy-one other torpedoes.
A gigantic hole ripped open in the stern of the warship. One powerful explosion followed close upon another, then yet more. Systems did not merely go down—they were entirely obliterated. Disruption spread throughout the great ship, affecting everything from life support in the rear four-fifths of its volume, to motive power, to shields and weapons systems. No corner of the crippled vessel was spared.
Igniting oxygen spread brief but intense flames to other parts of the ship. Huge fireballs flared into space as one section after another of the mighty vessel’s structural integrity was violated. As might be expected on board a state-of-the-art warship, fire suppression worked miracles, but it could not prevent a chain of instruments from being fried, nor entire compartments from being reduced to shards of metal, plastic, and other materials that were hurled into the surrounding vacuum.
The bridge suffered horribly, but as the most heavily shielded and best protected section of the ship, it maintained life-support functionality. Barely. Much else went down. Fire and escaping gases filled the vaulted compartment. Consoles collapsed upon themselves. Nothing moved save flame and smoke.
Then a single hand could be discerned: rising, clutching at the still-intact command console. Pulling himself up out of the wreckage that now surrounded him, eyes blazing, Khan embarked on the first of innumerable necessary work-arounds in a determined attempt to keep the warship’s instrumentation functional.
Sulu could not repress a grin as he reported to the science officer. “Sir, their weapons have been knocked out. Not bad, Commander.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Still supporting Carol Marcus between them, Kirk and Scott finally arrived at sickbay. No second explosions jolted them or otherwise threatened their balance.
“Bones— Nurse!”
At once startled and relieved to see them, staff swarmed around the new arrivals. Among those eager to help was Uhura, who assisted the captain in gently easing Carol onto a vacant bed.
“What happened?” she queried the other woman intently. “Are you okay?”
Striving to smile through the pain, Carol managed a weak nod at the communications officer. “I’ll be all right. But my father . . .” Her voice trailed off as she turned her head away.
One day she would have to try and reconcile the man who had raised her with the man she had known in his final moments. People changed with age, she knew. Some grew content, some bitter. Something similar had happened to her father. One day she would learn what that was . . . but not now.
Off to one side, an exuberant McCoy greeted Scott, who was being attended to by a pair of nurses, before moving on to express his joy at the return of his commanding officer and friend.
“Good to see you, Jim.”
Kirk nodded tiredly. “I never thought I’d say this, but it’s a relief to find myself in sickbay.” He gazed earnestly at the smiling doctor. “It was you, wasn’t it? You helped Spock arrange for the torpedo to detonate?”
McCoy nodded, proud and without shame. “Who else? After all, I’m the only one who knows how to manually arm that entirely new type of weapon. Even if I did learn how to do so accidentally.” His grin widened. “As Spock would say, ‘a fortuitous coincidence, Doctor.’”
Kirk still couldn’t believe it. “He killed Khan’s crew. Frozen and unknowing though they were, he killed them.”
McCoy spoke up. “No, he didn’t. Spock’s cold, but he’s not that cold. I’ve got Khan’s crew.” He nodded and pointed to his left.
As Kirk followed McCoy’s gesture, he saw that the main recovery ward had been cleared out, all beds and other equipment either removed or pushed to one side. In its place and occupying the entire space were seventy-two cryoshells that had been removed from their protective torpedoes. Each one was occupied by a three-hundred-year-old genetically warped man or woman.
McCoy’s grin widened. “Seventy-two human popsicles, present and accounted for.”
Kirk could only stare. “Son of a bitch. How did you fool his internal sensors into convincing him that he had transported his crew over to the other ship? You must have known that he would run scans on at least some of them as soon as they were shipped over.”
McCoy explained. “As soon as I learned on that planetoid near Qo’noS that there were cryogenically preserved individuals in those torpedoes, I had in-depth dimensional bioscans run on all of them in case the opportunity arose to attempt revival and also just as part of normal records keeping. When Spock originally proposed his idea, I had the ship’s bio-repair system generate nominal simulacra of each of the frozen crew. You know—the same process we use to regrow lost or damaged body parts for personnel who have been injured but who aren’t beyond repair and for whom for various medical reasons standard regeneration or prosthetics aren’t an option. I then set the system to duplicate everything. The collagen-based simulacra weren’t perfect—not enough time for that. But I felt they were good enough to fool a quick external probe. We froze the results and had them inserted back into the torpedoes in place of his actual crew. When Khan scanned his transported torpedoes for his people, the sensors he was employing indicated the presence of long-frozen human components within the torpedo bodies.” He shook his head at the memory of it.
“If he had bothered to go and open one of the casings manually, he would have seen immediately how he’d been fooled. But Mr. Superman was in too much of a hurry to lord it over us lesser beings. He trusted the preliminary readings of his instrumentation instead of his own eyes.”
On the bridge, a greatly relieved Sulu turned toward the Vulcan seated in the command chair. “Sir—the internal explosions have completely neutralized the other ship’s weapons systems and shields, and quite possibly her ability to maneuver as well. It is my professional opinion that she is no longer a threat. At this point it should be possible to—”
The sound of power cutting out was immediately recognizable. Internal lighting failed for an instant, until it could be restored by emergency backup. From the Science station, a concerned ensign issued a hasty preliminary report. “Sir, we have inclusive warp core misalignment. The ship’s internal power grid is down.”
“Switch to auxiliary power,” Spock ordered.
A second ensign compounded the bad news. “Auxiliary power is heavily depleted and failing, sir. All backup systems were dangerously stressed in the course of taking evasive maneuvers.” She bit her lower lip. “There’s barely enough to sustain the ship’s life-support systems and minimal artificial gravity. We’ve nothing available for propulsion or maneuvering.”
As Spock was deciding that the ship’s status could not possibly get any worse, a third officer proved him wrong. “Sir, I’m afraid our final maneuvers brought us in to the point where we appear to be caught in the Earth’s gravity well.”
“Mr. Sulu: Position relative to orbital stations?”
The helmsman only had to glance at his readouts. “Given our present rate of descent, sir, there’s nothing near enough to get anything big enough to us in time to halt our dive.”
Spock absorbed this. “Can we change our angle of descent enough to enter a temporary orbit? Even a low one?”
Sulu stared at his helm controls, sat back. Red lights he could have dealt with, but . . . there were no lights at all. No readouts—nothing. A situation unprecedented in his experience—but that didn’t mean he was unaware of the consequences. Essentially, the ship’s helm was . . . dead.
“Commander,” he reported professionally, “given what I’m seeing here, I can’t do anything.”
As the Enterprise shuddered and bounced, Uhura arrived on the bridge and stumbled to her station, easing aside the ensign who had been attending to it in her absence. Meanwhile, Sulu voiced what everyone around him already knew.
In sickbay, McCoy rushed toward the bed on which Carol Marcus lay and began to strap her in position. “Emergency lockdown!” To the patient he added more softly, “I hope you don’t get seasick.”
She smiled up at him. “Do you?”
His expression was already reflecting his discomfort. “Yeah.”
“If we can’t get engine power or shields back online,” Sulu declared as he worked his instrumentation, “we’ll be incinerated on entry.”
Calculating his options, Spock found that, yet again, fate had given him nothing worthwhile to work with. “Lieutenant,” he said, addressing Uhura, “sound evacuation. All decks.” Spinning the command chair, he addressed them all. “As acting captain, I order you to abandon the ship.” A touch of a control set in one arm activated the seat’s emergency harness. Like a pair of striking snakes, the twin segmented safety belts snapped into place across his torso, securing him in place against violent jolting as well as a potential loss of artificial gravity.
Although all eyes were on him, no one moved.
“I will remain aboard,” he continued, “to re-route and reapportion remaining power to life support, gravity, and evacuation shuttle bays. Once again: I order you to abandon ship.”
No one moved from their stations.
Spock repeated the command, more forcefully this time. “I order you all to abandon this ship!”
It was left, not for the first time, to Sulu to respond. “With all due respect, Commander—but we’re not going anywhere.” Turning in the helmsman’s seat, he activated his own crash harness. All around the bridge the same sharp snap was repeated as one set of emergency braces after another was locked into place.
Observing the unauthorized activity surrounding him, Spock contemplated repeated the order for a third time and finally decided against it. Humans being the demonstrably stubborn species that they were, he felt certain it would have been a waste of time. Should he survive, he knew he would have to include the mass disobedience in his official report. For some reason, though, he was not quite sure he would be able to manage that entry. There was the thought that should he attempt to do so, his eyes might give him trouble.
At least the ship’s computer spared him the need to speak any further.
“Attention, all decks. Evacuation protocols initiated. Attention, all decks, proceed to exit bays and report to your assigned evacuation shuttle. . . .”