The Autobiography of James T. Kirk (26 page)

A young ensign had been recommended to me by the commandant of Starfleet Academy, and he joined the ship at Starbase 11. He had just graduated from the academy, and had exceptional grades in the sciences and navigation. I always introduced myself to new crewmen when they first came aboard; I remembered that Garrovick had done that for me, and I routinely followed his example. I also had established a practice of either Spock or myself mentoring the new crewmen, at least for a little while. So when the young man beamed aboard, I was in the transporter room.

“Ensign Chekov, reporting for duty, Keptin,” he said, standing at attention upon seeing me. I was surprised at the thickness of his Russian accent; 23rd-century language education had for the most part done away with them. Except when the individual didn’t want to get rid of it. I would quickly become convinced that Chekov fell into this category.

“At ease,” I said. “Welcome aboard, Ensign.” I shook his hand.

“A pleasure to meet you, sir,” Chekov said. “I believe our ancestors are from the same region.”

“I’m sorry?” I said, genuinely confused, but he kept going.

“Perhaps they served the now-forgotten Communist Party of the ancient USSR …”

“Ensign,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“Your ancestors were from Kirkovo, Bulgaria, yes? Though I was born in St. Petersburg, my mother’s father was born in Odessa, which is just across the Black Sea …”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Ensign,” I said, cutting him off, “but my ancestors are not from Bulgaria. And I don’t believe any of them were ever communists.” Chekov could not hide his disappointment, and I couldn’t hide my amusement. I told him to report to sickbay for his physical. I decided I’d let Spock mentor this one.

“Our last item, sir. Commodore Wesley has made a crew transfer request,” Spock said. It was our morning briefing, in my quarters. McCoy was there, having stopped in for coffee before going on duty. “It struck me as rather odd.”

“Who does he want?” I already knew the answer. Commodore Wesley was requesting Janice Rand be transferred to his ship, the
Lexington
, to fill an opening in his communications department. Bob Wesley had been an instructor for a short time when I was at the academy. We’d then met several times when I was captain of the
Hotspur
, and struck up a friendship. I asked him this favor, and he happily obliged me.

“He is offering her a promotion to lieutenant,” Spock said.

“What’s so odd about that?” McCoy said. “It sounds like a good opportunity.”

“It is odd, Doctor, because Yeoman Rand has not requested a transfer,” he said. There wasn’t anything that got by Spock, which was usually a good thing. However, in this case, I’d hoped to keep anyone from being aware of my hand in this.

“Does Janice want to go?” I said, specifically avoiding the question Spock was implying. If he asked me directly, I wouldn’t lie to him. He looked at me and seemed to sense I was avoiding the subject.

“I have kept Lieutenant Hong from presenting it to Yeoman Rand,” he said, “awaiting your approval.” I told him he should take it to her, and Spock nodded and left. Once he was gone, however, McCoy didn’t waste any time getting to the heart of the matter.

“Commodore Wesley is a friend of yours, isn’t he?” I nodded. “I don’t think she wants to leave,” McCoy said. “And as your doctor, I’m not sure this is the best way to deal with the situation.” McCoy was the only one who knew about my guilt regarding Janice, and that it continued to afflict me. It had faded a little; I thought I could deal with it. But recent events made me reconsider.

“Bones, it’s just better if she’s not here. It’s how I should’ve dealt with Finney. Maybe if I’d gotten him away from here, away from me—”

“It’s not the same thing at all,” McCoy said. “Ben Finney was sick. Paranoids are clever; they can seem normal most of the time. I gave him six quarterly physicals and I missed it.”

“Maybe I should get you transferred,” I said. McCoy could see that I was closing the subject.

“You can’t transfer your troubles, Jim,” McCoy said. “This is a personal problem, not a personnel problem.” He was right, again, but I didn’t have to listen.

“This may be my last entry,” I said into the recorder the Metrons had given me. I was on a bleak, hot, uninhabited planetoid, sitting on an outcropping of minerals, exhausted. The pain in my right leg was blinding. I thought I was done. I looked down at the minerals at my feet. There were diamonds and sulfur. Something lit in my memory, but it was faint. I was looking for weapons, something that could kill a formidable, deadly creature. I struggled to remember the connection between sulfur and weapons. I pulled myself up and kept going.

The Federation colony on Cestus III had been destroyed by a race known as the Gorn. The
Enterprise
had chased the culprits into an uncharted section of space. Another race, who called themselves the Metrons, had astonishingly reached out from their planet and stopped both vessels, plucked me and the Gorn captain off of our bridges, dropped us onto this desolate, rocky place, and told us to fight it out.

From the beginning, I’d underestimated my opponent. He was a seven-foot reptilian, dressed in a gold tunic, and despite his staggering strength, moved much slower than me; I misinterpreted this as an indication he might not be as clever. But he’d lured me into a trap, and I was barely able to slip away with an injured leg. I had no food, no water; in a short time I’d be too exhausted to stay ahead of him.

When the Metrons put us on the planet, they said there’d be weapons, yet I had not found any that could kill my opponent. But I couldn’t give up. They had also said that if I lost the battle, my ship would be destroyed.

I stumbled onto a large rock and slipped to the ground. My hand landed in a white substance, a granular powder. It looked familiar. I tasted it. Salty. The memory connected to the sulfur now finally came forward.

Sam.

I’m five years old and watching my brother, Sam, build a cannon in our barn. He had soldered old tin cans with the bottoms cut out, and then he spread out three piles of chemicals onto an old table.

“What’s that stuff?”

“That’s sulfur,” he said, pointing to a pile of yellow powder, “the black powder is charcoal, and the white is saltpeter.” Before he could stop me, I had tasted the saltpeter.

“Spit that out!” I immediately did what he told me.

“You said it was salt.”

“Salt
peter
. You don’t eat it.”

“What’s it for?”

“Gunpowder.”

I then watched as he confidently and carefully mixed the chemicals in the right amounts, then ground them together. I remembered that taste, and on Cestus III, I tasted the white powder on my hands and spit it out. It was the same. I smiled at the memory. Sam’s cannon was going to save me.

History records that I defeated the Gorn with a bamboo cannon loaded with diamonds for cannonballs. Amazingly, the blast of diamonds coming out of a cannon only stunned the strange creature. But I had the advantage and could’ve killed him; I spared his life, however, and because of that the Gorn and the Federation now live in peace. I owed it all to Sam.

But I never got to tell him.

Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and I sat across from Khan Noonien Singh. I had found him and his followers in suspended animation in an ancient spaceship. The product of controlled genetics, he was the superman whose rule of over a quarter of the planet Earth in the 1990s I’d studied at the academy in John Gill’s class. And now, he was here in the present—the day before, he had taken over my ship and tried to kill me. He’d done this with the help of one of my officers, ship’s historian Lieutenant Marla McGivers. She’d mutinied because she’d fallen in love with Khan. With her help, he’d revived the 72 followers still in suspended animation on his primitive ship. They quickly had taken over the
Enterprise.
But Khan couldn’t run the ship without my crew, and they wouldn’t follow him. When he tried to kill me, McGivers had a change of heart and intervened to save my life. I was able to retake the ship.

Now, we were all cleaned up in our dress uniforms at a hearing to determine what to do with Khan and McGivers. Despite her last-minute change of heart, I still couldn’t forgive her act of mutiny. I looked at Khan, under guard, but still a leader. In that moment, I somehow forgot who he was, that he was a murderer, a dictator responsible for the death and oppression of millions. Instead, I fell in love with the idea that I would make a civilized decision.

“I declare all charges and specifications in this matter have been dropped,” I said. McCoy was the only one who protested, but I cut him off and turned to Spock. He and I had already had a conversation regarding Ceti Alpha V, a planet that wasn’t too far off our current course. It was a world of mostly jungle, with a variety of indigenous predators. The offer I made to Khan was he and his people could live there. It was arrogant on my part, but I didn’t see it. I thought I was making the humane choice. These people had so much potential, it would be such a waste to confine them to a reorientation center, where they’d probably spend most of their time trying to escape. Instead, I gave Khan a world that was his to tame. He answered the offer with a smile.

“Have you ever read Milton, Captain?” He was referencing Lucifer’s comment as he fell into the pit: better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. His response was educated, rarefied, civilized. I was admiring him, and he was playing me for a fool.

I turned to my mutinous historian. Did she want a court-martial or a life on this unforgiving world with the man she loved? She of course chose the latter; no one was going to get in the way of the romantic, heroic ending to this story that I’d helped to engineer.

The prisoners left the room, and Spock ruminated on what we’d just done.

“It would be interesting, Captain, to return to that world in a hundred years and to learn what crop had sprung from the seed you planted today.” It was a wonderful, hopeful thought, exactly what I was thinking when I’d proposed it.

Of course, we would be going back a lot sooner, to face the consequences of the biggest mistake of my career. But for the moment, I was confident and happy in my ignorant hubris.

It would take about a week to reach Ceti Alpha V. During the trip, I had confined Khan and his followers to one of the ship’s cargo bays, and had a force field established around it. I had the bay filled with enough food and supplies so we wouldn’t have need to bring the force field down; I didn’t trust that they wouldn’t try to take the ship again. When we reached Ceti Alpha V, I would have them beamed out of the cargo bay and directly down to the planet. During the trip, I had Scotty rig up some cargo carriers on the hangar deck to be used as temporary living quarters on the planet, which I would drop there once we arrived. I was inspecting his work when Spock came to see me.

“We’ve had another request for you to perform a marriage ceremony.” I looked at him, incredulous. Why would he bring this up now?

“Can’t it wait until after we drop Khan off?”

“I do not think so, sir. The request comes from Khan.” I exchanged a look with Scotty.

“Here’s one reason I never want to be captain …” Scotty said.