Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (55 page)

Jim looked up at the sky. Even the stars had faded in the dawn. It was too bright even to search for the reflected light of the single ship that remained in orbit around Genesis—if it had not already fled the unstable star system.

He glanced around, found Kruge’s phaser, and scooped it up. Then he slid one arm beneath Spock’s limp body, heaved him onto his shoulder, and pushed himself to his feet. He opened his communicator, muffled the pickup by rubbing his thumbnail back and forth across it, did his best to copy Kruge’s low, harsh voice, and repeated the last words Kruge had transmitted.

Then he waited. His legs were trembling with fatigue. He raised the communicator to try once more—

And felt the gentle tingle of a transporter beam forming around him. It dematerialized his body, and Spock’s, and carried them away.

Saavik materialized aboard a Klingon fighter. The others appeared around her. A single officer of the ship observed their arrival.

Saavik measured the distance to his weapon with her gaze. She glanced sidelong at Captain Sulu. He stood in a completely relaxed attitude of appraisal. He was ready. If two at once—

The officer gestured with his phaser. It was set to fire in a wide fan. It was clear that if anyone moved suspiciously, the officer would stun them all simultaneously and dispose of them at his leisure.

Doctor McCoy suddenly cried out in pain and fell to his knees. Chekov and Scott quickly moved to help him. Saavik and Sulu remained where they were, but they both realized they were at too great a disadvantage. As Sulu turned away to help the others with McCoy, he muttered, “I wonder what O-sensei would have said about phasers?”

Saavik held back from touching McCoy again. When he brushed against her, back on Genesis, it was not the doctor she sensed, but Mister Spock. McCoy carried in him the unique pattern of her teacher, trapped and blind and weakening. The experience left Saavik thoroughly shaken.

Nevertheless, it explained a great deal. And it opened so many possibilities…possibilities which would be closed again if they all remained prisoners, and above all if Genesis destroyed itself before those remaining on its surface could be rescued.

Composed once more, Saavik mentally ran through the forms of address in the high tongue of the Klingon Empire. She was unfamiliar with the lower dialects she had heard the other crew members speak, but no matter. It would surely be better to speak to the Klingon officer in a form too high than in one too low. If she could speak to him without offending him, she might have some chance of persuading him to rescue those left behind. She might even be able to persuade him to surrender, for the high tongue was a very persuasive language.

Whatever she did, she had only a little time. The ship lay oriented so its forward port faced Genesis directly. The tectonic activity had become so violent that even from this distance she could see the great rifts in the planet’s crust and the glowing fires of its interior. Its orbit around its sun was decaying rapidly; the star’s blue-white disk grew larger as Saavik watched. Before the planet destroyed itself, its surface conditions would be lethal.

“Worthy opponent,” she said, hoping that her accent was not too atrocious, “we find ourselves in a delicately balanced position.”

He glanced at her sharply and frowned. His hand tightened on the grip of his phaser.

“You are one,” Saavik said, “and we are five.” She neglected to point out that Doctor McCoy was in no state to join in any opposition. “Furthermore, this entire star system will soon degenerate into a plasma of subelementary particles. If we do not rescue our respective shipmates and flee, we will all perish.”

“Stop!”

She stopped. The tone of his voice gave her little choice.

“Why do you speak to me in this manner?” he said. He spoke quite acceptable Standard.

“I did not know you spoke our language,” she said.

“Of course I speak your barbarian pidgin—do you think me so ignorant of my enemies? But you speak to me in Kumburan, and I am Rumaiy. Could it be that you have not been taught the difference?”

“It could be,” Saavik admitted. “I did not intend offense.”

“Could it be that you believe the slanderous cant put about, that Kumburanya are in the ascendancy over Rumaiym?”

“I confess to an unforgivable ignorance of the subject,” Saavik said, not altogether truthfully. She had been told at the Academy that the language she was studying was the only significant one in the Klingon Empire. That did not seem quite the appropriate response just now. “In the Federation we employ a single language in public, so we may all communicate.”

“Reductionists!” he said with contempt. “Obliterators of diversity!” He muttered something unpleasant in a language Saavik did not know, and then he started to say something which she feared would be a lengthy tirade against the social or political group that opposed his own.

“But I am not ignorant about the world below us,” Saavik said quickly, taking the risk of incurring his anger by interrupting him. “And it is close to destroying itself. Look at it! You cannot pretend the signs do not exist! We must cooperate to survive!”

“I have my orders.”

“Orders from a commander unaware of the dangers on the surface, or beneath it—a commander who may even now be dead? If you value diversity…my worthy opponent, this system will soon lose its diversity completely. In a matter of hours it will consist of nothing but a homogeneous mass of highly entropic protomatter.”

The officer said nothing, but gazed at Saavik thoughtfully.

The communicator erupted in a muffled burst of static. Saavik cursed silently, for it broke his consideration. She would have to start persuading him all over again—if she got the chance. No doubt this was his commander with new orders, orders that could not be of any benefit to Saavik and her companions.

When she heard the voice she started. She glanced at Captain Sulu and knew her suspicion was correct, because he was forcing himself not to react, not to burst out in surprised and relieved laughter. They both looked surreptitiously up at the command seat.

The officer hesitated before replying to the order. Saavik dug her nails into her palms.

The officer touched controls.

Then they all waited.

The last thing Jim Kirk saw on the surface of Genesis was the body of his son, drifted over with scarlet leaves and outlined by the fires of the world that had meant so much to him.

That world faded like a dream.

A transporter chamber solidified into reality around Jim Kirk. He blew his breath out in a sharp reaction of relief, for if he had been under suspicion he might have found his and Spock’s atoms spread all over space by the transporter beam.

Dredging from the depths of his mind the layout of a Klingon fighter, he settled Spock’s body more firmly on his shoulder and headed for the control room. He saw no one as he strode through the corridors, and he could not help but think, with some trepidation, that this was precisely the sort of emptiness the boarding party had confronted on the
Enterprise.
He drew the phaser. It fit his hand strangely, having been designed for different joints and different proportions.

Doors opened for him. He stepped into the control room.

Kruge’s second in command revealed no surprise when Kirk entered. Like Kirk, he held a phaser. Unlike Kirk, he was alone. Even if he fired now, he would fall to Kirk’s phaser, and the prisoners behind him would become his captors.

“Where is Commander Kruge?” he asked. He spoke as if the question were his final duty. Kirk knew, then, that his masquerade had not fooled the officer for a moment.

“Gone,” Kirk said. “Dead. Engulfed by Genesis.”

Defeated and resigned, the officer spread his hands. Kirk nodded once, sharply.

Saavik vaulted from the work-pit and relieved Maltz of his phaser. Chekov helped McCoy to his feet. The strain in the doctor’s face, the strain of having been removed again from proximity to Spock, began to ease.

“How many more?” Kirk said.

“Just him, sir!” Scott said.

Kirk lowered Spock to the deck. “Bones, help Spock! Everyone else find a station.”

Saavik put Maltz’s phaser in her belt, and waited. Slowly, reluctantly, he drew his dagger and surrendered it to her.

“You!” Kirk said to him. “Help us, or die!”

“I do not deserve to live!”

“Fine—I’ll kill you later! Let’s get out of here!”

He sprinted to a place on the bridge, leaving Kruge’s second confused and defeated. Everyone else had already taken a spot. Kirk trusted that they had all spent their time here trying to figure out which instrument performed which function.

Beyond the viewpoint, the Genesis sun contracted and brightened. It was a few minutes, no more, from nova. The instability of the planet affected its orbit in an accelerating manner. As the path decayed, the world spiraled toward the sun, drawing the ship along with it.

Kirk glanced at the beautiful and unfamiliar alien script, of which he could not read a word.

“Anybody here read Klingon?” he said.

No one answered, though Saavik glanced at him sharply, then looked away as if she were embarrassed.

Just like Spock, Kirk thought. She considers it a personal failing if she can’t do absolutely everything.

“Well, take your best shot,” Kirk said to his friends.

“If you can bypass into this module—” Chekov said to Scott.

Scott made a sound of disgust. “Fine, but where’s the damn antimatter inducer?”

“This?” Chekov replied. “No, this!”

“This,” Scott said, “or nothing.” He touched alien controls, took a deep breath, and moved another control to its farthest extent.

The ship whined. Everyone flinched as the sound wavered, then relaxed as it steadied and strengthened.

Sulu occupied a station as if it were built for him.

“If I read this right, sir, we have full power.”

Kirk did not doubt that the young commander read it right.

“Go, Sulu!”

The ship arced around, accelerated out of orbit, and hurtled at warp speed from the deteriorating system.

There was no conversation, there were no orders, there was simply a consensus between people who had known each other long and well. At what he judged to be a safe distance, Sulu pulled the fighter back from warp speed. If navigating the
Enterprise
was like driving a team of proud and immensely powerful draft horses, handling the Klingon ship was like being perched on the back of a skittish two-year-old colt during its first race. Sulu oriented it so the viewport faced the system they had just fled.

The planet fell toward its sun, which burned with an intense blue-white light. Stellar flares burst from the incandescent surface, reaching out to capture anything within their grasp.

The only thing within their grasp was the Genesis world. With shocking suddenness, the sun engulfed it.

The Genesis world was gone.

“Good-bye, David,” Jim Kirk whispered.

The disk of the star expanded, exploding to millions of times its previous volume until it was nothing but a tenuous, vaguely luminescent, spiral cloud of plasma.

“It will form another world,” Saavik said.

Kirk glanced at her sharply.

“The protomatter will condense to a plasma of normal matter,” she said. “The plasma will cool. It will condense to dust, thence to a star and a family of planets. This time, lacking the Genesis wave, it will be stable. A surface will harden, oceans will form, the sun’s radiation will induce chemical reactions. Life will begin. In time…it may evolve as David and his friends intended.”

“In millions of years,” Kirk said.

“No, Admiral,” she said. “In billions of years.”

“I’m glad you find some comfort in the long view, Lieutenant,” Kirk said.

Sulu spoke, breaking the uneasy tension between Kirk and Saavik. “We’re clear and free to navigate,” he said.

“Best speed to Vulcan, Captain.” Kirk fell gratefully back into the role he knew best. “Mister Chekov, take the prisoner below.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Wait!” Kruge’s second in command drew back from him and turned angrily on Kirk. “You said you would kill me.”

“I lied,” Kirk said, and gestured for Chekov to get him off the bridge.

After a quick and dirty self-taught course on the finer details of navigating a Klingon fighting craft, Sulu laid in a course for Vulcan. Saavik puzzled out the communications system.

“Lieutenant Saavik of Federation science ship
Grissom,
calling Starfleet Communications. Come in, please.”

“Communications to
Grissom.
We’ve been trying to reach you folks for days! A freighter just picked up a lifeboat with a couple of survivors from a merchant vessel—they claim Klingons raided their ship!”

“It is likely their claim is true,” Saavik said. “We…experienced a similar encounter.”

“Are you all right?”