Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (23 page)

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.

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.

“Doctor 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 sickbay.

“Where
is
David?” she said.

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

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

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 turbolift 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 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.

“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 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 Mister 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 silence. 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 subjected 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. His hands shook on the controls, partly from humiliation and 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,” Mister Sulu said.

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

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

Fire
—

The magnetic bearings of a stabilizing gyro exploded, and the
Enterprise
lurched. The phaser 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 Mister 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.

The
Enterprises
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 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.