Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (31 page)

This mission would rebuild her family’s fortune and its honor. She resisted unseemly pride: it was merely her duty to repair the damage done to all their reputations by the actions of her older brother. Kiosan had never forgiven their family for choosing Valkris, rather than him, to lead them.

In his despair and envy he set out to prove how spectacularly correct the family had been to overlook him. He reneged on all the vows he had made when he came of age. He put aside his veil and showed his face to the world. He addicted himself to pleasure, and he showed no desire to change. Valkris offered him the opportunity to return to the family three times, and even a fourth, though the fourth offer strained her sense of aesthetics. Not only did he refuse—he dared her to break her own word and join him.

Valkris had disowned her brother with a regret so intense that to this moment she felt the pain. But Kiosan’s actions had sent their family’s reputation and merit into an inexorable slide that could not be reversed unless he repented or she released him. So Valkris had set him free. To all her other blood kin, he was dead. But he was still very much alive to Valkris, and when she thought of him, as she often did, she wished him well in his freedom and envied him more than a little.

She had made vows, too. Every member of each of the great families took the vows upon coming of age. Despite the example of her older brother, Valkris was unable to break them. Every action she had taken since accepting her position had been intended to benefit the family. She had never fled a duel. She had never even lost a duel, though she bore scars from wounds that would have proven her honor even had she yielded to the opponent who inflicted them. Because of her reputation for ferocious tenacity, she had not been challenged in some years. Valkris did not fight for an afternoon’s entertainment. She had buried more opponents than she had permitted to be helped from the field.

It was good that the family would recover from Kiosan’s foolishness. It was better that it was Valkris who designed the recovery, and who would carry it out.

She extended both her hands and clenched her fingers into fists, feeling the tension and the strength in her long, strong muscles. She rose smoothly to her feet and made a hand signal before the sensor of the intercom.

“Yes?” the captain of the mercenary vessel said after a moment.

“The gravity in my cabin is very weak. I require it to be increased.”

“There’s a matter of the extra fuel to run the grav generators.”

“You will not lose by acceding to my requests, Captain,” Valkris said. She was tired enough of his pettiness to consider making him a challenge. She resisted the unworthy impulse. She could gain no honor by vanquishing such a creature. He had no style.

“Very well,” the captain said disagreeably.

A short time later the gravity in Valkris’ cabin began to increase. She knelt again and composed herself for meditation. When the force increased well beyond that of her homeworld, she simply smiled and set herself to find the discipline she had been seeking.

Saavik did her work automatically. She had practiced on the bridge of the
Enterprise
so often that the responses came without her conscious thought. Any change, any anomaly, would call itself to her attention instantly. For the moment everything was normal—as normal as it could be for a half-crippled ship—so Saavik could think of other things.

She thought about David, she thought about Mister Spock, and she thought about the strangeness of her life. Mister Spock had helped her transform herself from a starving, abandoned, illiterate child-thief into a polished, controlled, and well-educated Starfleet officer. Under most circumstances she was the very model of Vulcan propriety. That had been her goal, until her last conversation with Spock. “You must find your own path,” he had said. The wisdom of his words impressed her. He had told her she might find herself considering possibilities that she knew he would not approve. She should not, he said, dismiss them on that criterion alone. Instead, she should remain open to them.

The path she had chosen last night led into the unexplored regions of her Romulan heritage. Spock would most certainly not have encouraged such a journey. For that reason Saavik found even more cause to admire his insight into her character and his own.

Saavik thought about her life, she thought about Mister Spock, and she thought about—her thoughts kept coming back to—David.

“Lieutenant Saavik.”

“Yes, Admiral.” Saavik turned to face Admiral Kirk, who had just stepped onto the bridge with an unfamiliar officer: Captain Esteban of the
Grissom,
by his uniform and insignia.

“J.T.,” Kirk said, “this is Lieutenant Saavik. Lieutenant, Captain Esteban is on a survey trip to Genesis. He needs someone along who has a scientific background, and who witnessed the creation of the world. Doctor Marcus has declined to go. Would you care to volunteer?”

“Aye, Admiral,” she said. She thought of David. The words tasted bitter. She turned back to her console.

Chapel paused at McCoy’s bedside and felt his forehead again. His fever had receded, and she had heard him move restlessly as if he were about to wake up.

“Chris?”

“Yes, Leonard.” She tried to keep the ragged wariness from her voice, but the pain still showed. Whatever his excuse for saying a very Vulcan thing to her in a creditable imitation of Spock’s voice, it had still hurt her badly.

“What’s going on? What happened?”

“What do you mean, Leonard? Since you spoke to me last? Since last night? Since we left Spacedock? What’s the
matter
with you?”

“I…I don’t know. Everything seems so strange.”

She felt concerned enough about him to turn on the medical sensors above his bed. She had held off doing so earlier because she knew what he would say if he awoke to find them quietly talking to themselves over his head.

“What’re you doing? I’m not sick. I don’t need those damned blinkenlightzen interrupting my sleep.”

Chris managed to laugh. “That’s more like it,” she said. She watched the sensors through a couple of cycles. Nothing seemed amiss. Leonard’s temperature had dropped to normal. His body chemistry showed no evidence of the metabolic breakdown products of alcohol. But if he had not been drunk last night…what had affected him? She turned off the sensors.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Eight hundred hours.”

“Good lord.”

Without comment, Chris let him sit up. If he was well enough to help, all the better.

“Leonard,” she said.

“Hm?”

“Why did you say that to me?”

“What?”

“A little while ago you woke up, and you said, ‘Vulcans do not love.’ ”

“My gods, Chris,” he said, shocked. “Did I? I’m
sorry.
All night I’ve been having those horrible dreams where you can’t tell if they’re real or not. I can’t even remember anything about them except how frightening and how real they were. I guess I must have been dreaming…about Spock.”

“I see,” she said.

“I never would have said such a thing if I’d known what I was saying. Will you accept my apology?”

“Yes,” she said. Wanting to forget about it as soon as possible, she changed the subject. “Are you well enough to go on duty? Someone has to accompany Carol Marcus to Spacelab. I think it should be one of us.”

“Good gods—Jim isn’t going to let anybody go down there—!”

He jumped out of bed. Chris caught him when he staggered and nearly fell.

“I’m all right—just stood up too fast.”

“Uh-huh.” She helped him sit on the edge of the bed. “You’re in no condition to leave the ship—especially since I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”

“But—”

“Don’t be an ass, Leonard. You can stay here and rest under your own authority, or you can stay under Admiral Kirk’s orders. Your choice.”

“I forbid you—” He stopped. “Sorry. Chris, I’ve already been down there—I’ve seen…what happened to Carol Marcus’s friends. Letting her see it would be cruel.”

“I saw the records you made—surely you didn’t think I’d take Carol into
that
—” The violence of the murders flashed unbidden into her mind. “
Grissom
’s medical officer has already taken a team into the space station,” Chris said. “The…casualties…are in stasis. The sites are in order.” The technical words made the descriptions easier to say.

“Chris, if you’re sure—”

“What I said before still holds. You’re staying here, under any circumstances.”

McCoy stopped trying to hide his exhaustion. He sagged back on his bunk.

“I’m just overtired,” he said. “Don’t trouble Jim with this.”

“That’s up to you.”

“I’ll stay in sickbay.”

Chris nodded, relieved at his acquiescence.

The codes and the documentation for Genesis had to be retrieved from Regulus I; the bodies of Khan’s victims had to be formally identified and transferred to the
Enterprise.
Carol walked toward the transporter room, dreading the task that faced her. David, beside her, suddenly touched her elbow and drew her to a halt.

“What’s the matter, David?”

“There’s no reason for you to go down there. I can…take care of everything.”

“I hardly need to be protected by my own son,” Carol said. “This is my responsibility.”

“Mother—”

“David, we both lost friends in this disaster,” Carol said. One of the ways she could hold off her grief was by reminding herself continually that she was not alone.

“—I know that Vance was more than just a friend to you.”

“I know you know it. Did you think we thought we were secret lovers?” She herself had thought it must be obvious to everyone, because she had felt as if she were walking around in a perpetual glow, a bit like the way David and Saavik looked this morning. Right after she and Vance had become lovers, David said offhand to her that he did not understand why the two of them spent so much time together. “Del’s a lot more interesting,” David had said. “Vance is okay, but he’s kind of, well, boring, I think.” And Carol, amused that David had not caught on, replied, “Then you don’t know Vance very well.” Vance was quieter than his partner, more reserved, and steadier. Del possessed a fragile ego and a quick temper, and Carol, for all that she acknowledged his brilliance, thought he was a little crazy. Vance, though…Vance was the sanest person she had ever known. Del might be interesting to be around—as in the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Being with Vance was simply and purely fun.

David had seemed to catch on, eventually, though now was the first time they had directly discussed it. Far from being jealous, as certain psychological theories would have made him, he had subsequently become much better friends with Vance, which had pleased Carol tremendously.

“I just thought,” David said, “if you didn’t have to see him…”

Carol took his hand and held it between hers. “David, losing Vance is the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. I still don’t believe he’s gone. Because of our work, I
have
to go down to Spacelab. But even if I didn’t, I’d have to go anyway. Do you understand?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“If I don’t…If I don’t see him, I’ll never be able to believe he’s dead. I have to accept it.”

David hugged her suddenly.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so damned sorry. When you and he were together, you looked happier than I ever saw you before. It just isn’t fair—!” His voice broke, and he did not try to say more.

Carol hugged him, then drew back and scrubbed her sleeve across her eyes.

“We’d better go,” she said.

Carol Marcus and Christine Chapel materialized within the stasis room of Spacelab. The blue glow of the stasis fields leaked eerily from the edges of five of the chambers. Carol hesitated a moment, then opened the first one. She looked down at the shrouded figure, then drew the cloth from the pale face of a very young man, who had died with an expression of terror.

“This is Jan.” She said his full name and his I.D. number for the identification record that Chris was making. “He was our steward. He hadn’t been on Spacelab for long. A freighter stopped by a few months ago, and when it left he stayed behind. He said he was working his way across the galaxy. He wanted to see everything there is to see. ‘I know that’s impossible,’ he told me, ‘but it’s too good a line to pass up.’ He wrote poetry, but he would never let anyone read it.” She covered his pale face again, closed his chamber, and opened the second one, which protected an older man with flecks of gray in his black hair. After identifying him for the record, Carol said, “Yoshi, our cook, shouldn’t have been here at all. He was due for leave, with the rest of Spacelab’s staff. But when he found out a few of us were staying, he said he would, too, because otherwise we would all forget to eat and make ourselves sick with malnutrition. I think, though, that he stayed because he was as fascinated by Genesis as the rest of us. He didn’t want to miss the second phase of the experiment.”

Carol glanced at Chris. “Is the machine getting this? I want you to get it all.”

Chris nodded. Carol was well aware that nothing was needed beyond a formal identification, but Chris recognized the private eulogies to be a facet of Carol’s grief. “Yes,” she said. “I’m getting it.”

The third chamber held a fair, handsome young man who looked completely at peace.

“Delwin March,” Carol said. “He and Vance Madison were partners. They practically invented a whole field of physics. They called it ‘kindergarten physics’ because it dealt with sub-elementary particles. They used to go to conferences and drive their older colleagues to distraction by refusing to take anything seriously. As far as we know yet, the two particles they discovered are the basis of the whole universe—and they named them ‘snarks’ and ‘boojums,’ out of a Lewis Carroll poem. I didn’t get along very well with Del March. There was a streak of fury and pain in him that frightened me. I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t do anything about it and I couldn’t do anything to help him. The only person who could reach him when he began to sink into that anger was his partner, and all Vance could do was keep him from hurting himself too badly.” She brushed a lock of light brown hair from March’s forehead and covered his face with his shroud.

The fourth chamber held the body of a Deltan woman. Her face was stately and elegant and extraordinarily beautiful. “Zinaida Chitirih-Ra-Payjh was one of the finest mathematicians in the Federation. We couldn’t have gotten past stage one of Genesis without her.” Carol smiled sadly. “All the boys, Jan and David and Del—poor Del, particularly—and some of the young women on the station—fell desperately in love with her, of course. Almost every human here fell in love with her or her partner or with both of them.” She glanced at the recorder. “Jedda Adzhin-Dall isn’t here. He died by phaser, down inside Regulus I.” She sighed. “Deltans have a powerful effect on humans. Zinaida and Jedda handled it beautifully. They were polite and cool and amused. They knew, I think, that nothing will douse a crush quicker than amusement. Everybody wondered what they did in their cabin together. I doubt anybody ever got up the nerve to ask. I think they laughed—not cruelly, but just because human beings must have seemed so silly and immature to them.” She put the palm of her hand along the side of Zinaida’s face. “Dear Zinaida…” Carol glanced at Chris. “Leonard said he could not find a cause of death,” she said matter-of-factly.

Chris hesitated, disturbed by Carol’s eerie calm. But refusing to answer would be close to lying.

“Deltans can will themselves to die,” she said. “If they find themselves in intolerable conditions. I think she wouldn’t have felt any pain.”

“She wouldn’t have been frightened of pain,” Carol said. “She would have seen it as a challenge—maybe even as an opportunity to experience something she hadn’t chosen to encounter before.” She replaced the shroud carefully. She opened the last chamber.

“This is Vance Madison.” Her hands shaking, she uncovered his face. It was strong, intelligent, determined. The light glinted like jewels in his very curly black hair. “I used to tease Del and him by calling them ‘twins,’ because they were so completely different. Fair and dark, white and black, short and tall, quick-tempered and serene…crazy and sane.” Her calm voice suddenly broke. “Oh, damn, Chris, now I have to believe he’s dead…”

Chris Chapel turned off the recorder, went to Carol, and put her arms around her while she cried. “I know,” Chris said. “I understand.”

After Carol and Chris beamed down to Spacelab, Saavik and David stepped up on the transporter platform to beam into Regulus I’s new ecosystem.

“Energize,” Saavik said.

“Lieutenant,” the cadet said hesitantly, “I can’t find a clear place to beam you to.”

“What?” David said. “It’s full of open spaces in there.”

Saavik joined the cadet at the console and inspected the readings.

“It is true, David. The surface in range of the beam is covered with some amorphous material. Even the tunnels are filled.” The readings were completely different from what she had expected. She scanned further until she found a relatively empty spot. “Beam me here, cadet,” she said. “I will report what I find.”

“Saavik, wait a minute—” David said.

She returned to the platform. “I will either return immediately or send for you. Energize.”

The cadet obeyed.

Saavik experienced the brief disorientation of dematerialization. She arrived on Regulus I, beneath the planetoid’s surface and within one of the tunnels dug as a staging area for the second phase of the Genesis project. She held her communicator open and her phaser ready, should the changes threaten her.

She found herself in a very small clearing left by the random arrangement of a tangled mass of undergrowth. Vines completely filled the tunnel in which Doctor Marcus and her team had hidden the Genesis records.

“Saavik to
Enterprise.
I have reached the surface. David, the flora has grown into the tunnels and filled them. Is this what you intended?”

“No. Not at all—but like I told you, things always happen that you don’t expect. I’m coming down.”

“Wait a moment. I will clear a place for you.” First she tried to push aside the beautiful flowering tendrils, but they sprang back into place. In trying to move them, she crushed some of the stems and blossoms. The damaged foliage released a pungent and entrancing scent.

Saavik set her phaser to very-short-range disintegrate. She had checked the phaser out precisely because David had told her that the Genesis experiment was so complex that its outcome could not be predicted in every detail. She had not, however, expected to be attacked by the vegetation.

The scarlet-edged green leaves withered and vanished before the beam of her phaser. The sweet, spicy fragrance intensified. She opened her communicator.

“Saavik to
Enterprise.
Cadet, can you lock onto the cleared area?”

“Aye, Lieutenant.”

David materialized beside her. He looked around and whistled in surprise.

“I take that to mean you did not expect anything like this,” Saavik said.

“It’s even more viable than we thought! My gods, look at the growth, even under artificial light!”

Saavik forbore to puncture his enthusiasm by pointing out that the ball of glowing plasma deeper inside the planetoid gave light no more “natural” than did the overhead fixtures illuminating the tunnels. The mass of reacting gases was held to the proper density by magnetic fields and kept in place by stress fields. It and the surrounding shell of the planetoid existed in an essentially unstable relationship.

“I would call this ‘overgrowth,’ David. And we still must reach the Genesis records: We do not have much time.”

“Hey, I designed these vines—at least give me a chance to admire my own handiwork for a minute, will you?”

“Admire the ones behind us. I must destroy some of the ones in our path. Please do not take it personally.” Before she fired her phaser she added, “They are very beautiful. And the scent is aesthetically pleasing.”

“Thanks.”

Through the intertwining foliage, Saavik could just see the great pile of portable memory banks that held the Genesis research. As she cut a path in that direction, David plucked a spray of leaves from a vine, crushed them, and inhaled the scent.

“They’ll grow berries in a couple of months. Ought to make great wine.”

Saavik reached the cache of Genesis records. She focused her phaser to a tight beam, powered it down to its minimum level, and used it like a scalpel to remove the undergrowth from the boxes. As she finished, David approached. He put his arms around her from behind and rubbed the leaves together between his hands. The refreshing perfume rose up around her face.

“Wouldn’t you like to try some wine that tasted like these smell?”

Saavik holstered her phaser and took David’s hands between her own. She stroked the backs of his hands with her fingers and grasped his wrists, feeling the cool throb of his pulse.

“The scent requires nothing more,” she said. “It is complete in itself. It is perfect, very much like its designer.”

He let the leaves fall to the ground and hugged her more tightly, burying his face in her hair. She wanted nothing more than to respond to his caress.

Her communicator beeped.

“I’d never design a bird that made a silly noise like that,” David whispered in Saavik’s ear. “Must have been my mother, she was never very good at music. Let’s ignore it.”

“It would merely make more silly noises,” she said. “And when it stopped, a whole flock of its comrades would come looking for it, accompanied by a whole flock of cadets playing at being security officers.” She kissed him quickly and pulled out her communicator. Chuckling, David brushed the last remnants of his vines from the storage boxes.

“Saavik here.”

“How long will you be, Lieutenant?” Admiral Kirk said. “Captain Esteban wants to leave for the Mutara sector as soon as possible.”

“A few more minutes, Admiral,” Saavik said. “We have located the Genesis records and are preparing to beam them up.”

“Very well. Shake a leg. Kirk out.”

With a curious frown, Saavik closed the communicator. “ ‘Shake a leg’?” she said to David. “How would that be of benefit? Is it an exercise?”

“It’s an idiom, it means hurry up. Why did he tell you Esteban’s plans?”

“Because he has ordered—” She stopped, and then, to be fair, she said, “Or, rather, he strongly invited me to volunteer to accompany
Grissom
to Genesis. Such invitations are not wisely declined.”

“What? Damn! So he’s trying to cut me and Mother out of the follow-up! Saavik, do you know what this means?”

“It means he is under the impression that you do not care to go—he said you had declined.”

“The hell I did!”

“But he said—Oh. Perhaps he meant Doctor Marcus, senior.”

“He didn’t even ask
me!
Son of a bitch!”

“Surely if you tell him you wish to go—”

“He’ll probably think of some way to stop me. He’ll try, anyway. Especially now that you’re going.”

David made Saavik acutely uncomfortable when he referred to the admiral in such an angry, abusive tone.

“Why do you speak of him like this, David? I was under the impression that you and he had found reason to accept each other.”

“So was I. For a while. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe we’re too different.” He blew his breath out in exasperation, then suddenly grinned. “I have an idea. Let’s let him wait. Let’s blast a trail to the interior and see what’s going on there.”

Saavik put her hand on her phaser and very nearly drew it. She was so tempted by his invitation that the strength of her desire shocked her.

“I would like that very much,” she said.

“Great. Let’s go.”

“What I would like is very far from what I must do.”

“Oh, come on—a few minutes won’t hurt.”

“It would take hours to clear a trail through the tunnels.”

He snatched playfully at her phaser. She avoided him easily, and not at all playfully.

“Spoilsport,” he said. “I thought you were different, but you’re just like everybody else in Starfleet.”

“I am like no one else at all, in Starfleet or outside it,” she said.

“Indoctrinated in the military mind.”

“You are provoking me, David.”

As she pulled out her communicator, David grabbed again for her phaser, this time with more determination. Reacting automatically, she grasped his hand in a move Commander Sulu had taught her in a self-defense class. The phaser went flying.

“Let go! Geez, what are you doing?”

“The technical term is
‘kotegaeshi,’
” Saavik said.