Duty, Honor, Redemption Read online

  Saavik snapped around with one quick frowning glance, but recovered her composure immediately. “All hands, battle stations.” The Klaxon alarm began to howl. “Visual: spherical coordinates: plus eighty-seven degrees, minus twelve degrees. Extend sensor range. Mister Croy, is there a disabled ship, or is there not?”

  The viewscreen centered on the ominous, probing shapes of three Klingon cruisers.

  “I can’t tell, Captain. The Klingon ships are deliberately fouling our sensors.”

  “Communications?”

  “Nothing from the Klingons, Captain, and our transmission frequencies are being jammed.”

  “Klingons on attack course, point seven-five c,” Spock said.

  Saavik barely hesitated. “Warp six,” she said.

  “You can’t just abandon Kobayashi Maru!” Doctor McCoy exclaimed.

  “Four additional Klingon cruisers at zero, zero,” Spock said. Dead ahead. Warp six on this course would run the Enterprise straight into a barrage of photon torpedoes.

  “Cancel warp six, Mister Croy. Evasive action, zero and minus ninety. Warp at zero radial acceleration. Visual at zero, zero. Doctor McCoy,” Saavik said without looking back at him, “Enterprise cannot outmaneuver seven Klingon cruisers. It will, however, outrun them. If we lure them far enough at their top speed, we can double back even faster—”

  “And rescue the survivors before the Klingons can catch up to us again,” McCoy said. “Hmm.”

  “It is the choice between a small chance for the disabled ship, and no chance at all,” Saavik said. “If there is in fact a disabled ship. I am not quite prepared to decide that there is not.”

  The viewscreen confirmed four more Klingon ships dead ahead, and then the Enterprise swung away so hard the acceleration affected the bridge even through the synthetic gravity.

  “Mister Sulu, Mister Croy, lock on photon torpedoes. Fire…” She paused, and Spock wondered whether her early experience—fight or be killed—could, under stress, win out over regulations and the Federation’s stated object of keeping the peace. “Fire only if we are fired upon.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Sulu glanced at the young ensign beside him. Croy clenched his hands around the firing controls. “Easy,” Sulu said quietly. The ensign started, then forcibly relaxed his hands.

  Another blip on the sensor screens: “Enemy cruisers, dead ahead.” A third group of ships arrowed toward them, opposing their new course.

  Saavik said something softly in a language with which Spock was not ultimately familiar, but by her tone it was a curse.

  The Klingons fired on the Enterprise.

  “Fire at will!” Saavik said.

  The viewscreen flared to painful brightness before the radiation sensors reacted to the enemy attack and dimmed the screen to half-intensity. The energy impact was so severe even the shields could not absorb it. Spock held himself steady against the wrenching blow, but it flung Sulu from his post. He crashed into the deck and lay still. McCoy and the intern vaulted down the stairs to the lower bridge and knelt beside him.

  “Mister Sulu!” McCoy said. His tricorder gave no reaction. “Spock, he’s dead.”

  Spock did not respond.

  “Engineering!” Saavik said.

  “Main energizer hit, Captain,” Chief Engineer Scott replied.

  Saavik slammed her hand down on her controls, transferring command to the helm. She took Sulu’s place. Croy fought for data enough to aim the torpedoes.

  Saavik did the calculations in her head, keyed them into the console, transferred a copy to Croy’s station, and spoke to Scott in the engine room.

  “Engage auxiliary power, Mister Scott. Prepare to return fire…now.” She fired. One of the Klingon cruisers fired on the Enterprise just as Saavik’s torpedo hit. The cruiser imploded, collapsing in upon itself, then exploded in eerie, complete silence. But its deathblow struck the Enterprise full force. The screen blazed again, then darkened, with the radiation of the furious attack.

  “We’re losing auxiliary power, Captain, and our shields along wi’ it,” Scott cried. “The ship canna take another—”

  The scream of irradiated electronics cut off Scott’s warning. The enemy ships in pursuit caught up to the Starfleet vessel. At close range, they fired. The Enterprise shuddered, flinging Uhura against the railing and to the deck. McCoy left Sulu’s inert body and knelt beside the communications officer.

  “Uhura—Uhura…Oh, my God,” McCoy whispered.

  Saavik fired at the Klingons, but nothing happened.

  “Mister Scott, all power to the weapons systems; it’s our only chance.”

  “Mister Scott…is a casualty….” his assistant replied. Her voice was drowned out by a flood of damage reports and pleas for medical help. “Environmental controls destroyed. Life support, nonfunctional. Gravity generators failing.”

  McCoy cursed at the intraship communications. “Doctor Chapel, I’ve got to have a team on the bridge! Doctor Chapel! Chris!”

  But he got no reply at all from sickbay.

  Saavik touched the photon torpedo arming control one last time, delicately, deliberately, yet with the realization that nothing would happen.

  “There is no power in the weapons systems, Captain,” Spock said. He felt the gravity sliding away. “There is, in fact, no power at all; we are merely bleeding the storage cells.”

  The enemy ships enclosed them, hovering at the vertices of an impenetrable polyhedron. Spock saw the final attack in the last fitful glow of the viewscreen.

  Firing their phasers simultaneously, the cruisers enveloped the Enterprise in a sphere of pure energy. Spock imagined he felt the radiation flaming through the ship. He grabbed for a handhold.

  His console exploded in his face.

  As he fell, he heard the wailing hiss of escaping air, a sound that had been the last experience of all too many spacefarers.

  Saavik, clutching at the helm officer’s console, fighting the ship’s quakes, turned just in time to see Mister Spock fall. For an instant she wished only to be ten years old again, so she could scream with fury and the need for revenge. Doctor McCoy struggled toward Spock, but never made it; the convulsions of the ship flung him down. He screamed, and collapsed with a groan.

  Saavik stood up. Her ship, her first command, lay dead in space, her crew was destroyed by her incompetence. She opened the hailing frequencies, not even knowing if any communications were left at all.

  “Prepare the escape pods,” she said. “All hands, abandon ship.” She armed the log buoy and fired it out into space. It would testify to her failure, yet to her honor in accepting the responsibility.

  “All hands,” she said again. “Abandon ship.”

  One

  Sitting in front of the viewscreen, Admiral James T. Kirk shook his head. He laughed softly, but more at memories than at what he had observed.

  “All right,” he said. “Open it up.”

  The wall in front of the video console parted and opened, revealing the destroyed bridge of the Enterprise. Kirk got up and walked into it. Acrid smoke burned his eyes, but the heavy-duty ventilation system had already begun to clear the air. He stepped carefully through shattered bits of equipment, over Doctor McCoy’s body, and stopped in front of Lieutenant Saavik. She met his gaze without flinching.

  “May I request the benefit of your experience, Admiral?”

  “Well, Lieutenant, my experience is that the Klingons never take prisoners.”

  Saavik’s expression hardened. Kirk turned all the way around, surveying the wreckage.

  This could have happened to me, he thought. It almost did, all too often and not in simulation, either.

  “Okay, folks,” he said. “The fun’s over.” He glanced at the upper level of the bridge. “Captain Spock?”

  Spock got smoothly to his feet. A scattering of breakaway glass shivered to the floor and crunched beneath his boots.

  “Trainees to debriefing,” he said.

  The young crew members, still st
unned by the realism of the test, got up and moved toward the exit. The more experienced bridge crew rose from being dead or injured, laughing and joking.

  Uhura got up and brushed bits of scorched insulation from her uniform. Sulu turned over and sat up slowly.

  “Was that rougher than usual, or am I just getting old?” he said. He climbed to his feet.

  Doctor McCoy lounged on the deck, lying on his side with his head propped on his hand.

  Kirk stood over him. “Physician, heal thyself.”

  McCoy gave him a hurt look. “Is that all you’ve got to say?”

  “I’m a Starfleet officer, not a drama critic,” Kirk replied.

  “Hmph.”

  “It’s too bad you’re not a cook,” Mister Sulu said to the admiral.

  “A cook? Why a cook?”

  “You could make fried ham,” Sulu said, deadpan.

  Jim Kirk started to laugh.

  “Fried ham?” Doctor McCoy exclaimed. “I’ll have you know I was the best Prince Charming in second grade!”

  “And as a side dish,” Sulu said in the tones of an obsequious waiter, “perhaps a little sautéed scenery? When it’s cooked it’s much easier to chew.” In an uncanny imitation of Doctor McCoy, he cried, “Mister Sulu! Mister Sulu! Oh, gods, Spock, he’s dead!”

  McCoy glanced at the ceiling in supplication, but then he could not stand it any longer. He began to laugh, too. From the upper bridge, Spock watched them, his arms folded.

  McCoy wiped tears from his eyes. “Mister Sulu, you exaggerate.”

  “Poetic license,” Sulu said.

  “Speaking of poetic license, or dramatic realism, or whatever,” McCoy said, serious for a moment, “you hit the floor pretty hard. Are you all right?”

  “I am, yes, but did they reprogram that simulation? I don’t remember its knocking us around quite so badly before killing us.”

  “We added a few frills,” Kirk said. “For effect.” He turned toward Saavik, who had watched their interplay as dispassionately as Spock. “Well, Lieutenant, are you going down with the sinking ship?”

  He had the feeling she had to draw herself from deep thought before she replied. She did not answer his question but, then, his question had after all been purely rhetorical.

  “The simulation is extremely effective,” Saavik said.

  “It’s meant to be.” Kirk noticed, though, that she appeared as self-possessed and collected now as when she had entered the simulator, unlike most of the other trainees, who came out sweating and unkempt.

  “But I question its realism.”

  “You think it’s an effective simulation, and you think it’s unrealistic?” Kirk asked.

  “Yes, sir.” Her imperturbability was not as complete as she pretended; Kirk could see the anger building up. “In your experience, how often have the Klingons sent ten cruisers after a single Starfleet vessel?”

  “Lieutenant,” Kirk said with an edge in his voice, “are you implying that the training simulation is unfair?”

  She took a deep breath and did not flinch from his gaze. “Yes, I should have been more direct. I do not think the simulation is a fair test of command capabilities.”

  “Why?”

  “The circumstances allow no possibility of success.”

  Jim Kirk smiled. “Lieutenant Saavik, do you think no one who worked on the simulation, and no one who ever took it before, ever noticed that the odds couldn’t be beaten?”

  She started to reply, stopped, and frowned. “No, Admiral,” she said slowly. “I admit I had not considered that possibility.”

  “You were given a no-win situation. That’s something any commander may have to face at any time.”

  She looked away. “I had not considered that, either.” She made the admission only with difficulty.

  “By now you know pretty well how you deal with life, Lieutenant. But how you deal with death is important, too, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I—” She cut herself off as if she would not trust herself to answer.

  “Think about it, Lieutenant,” Kirk said. “Just think about it. Carry on.” He turned to leave. At the top of the stairs, he came face-to-face with Doctor McCoy. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “You don’t think you could manage to push just a little bit harder, do you?” McCoy said softly.

  Kirk scowled. “They’ve got to learn, Doctor. We can’t keep the reins forever. Galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young.”

  He crunched through the debris on the floor and disappeared down the corridor.

  Sounding miffed, Uhura said, “What was that supposed to mean?”

  McCoy shrugged, and shook his head. He and Commander Uhura left together.

  Saavik sat alone in the ruins of her first command. She knew she must go to debriefing immediately…but she had many things to consider.

  Jim Kirk trudged toward the debriefing room. He felt tired, and depressed: and oppressed, by the shining self-confidence of the young people he had been observing. Or perhaps it was by the circumstances of fate that made him the instrument for shaking and scarring that self-confidence. But McCoy was right: he had been too hard on Lieutenant Saavik.

  He turned the corner and came face-to-face with Spock, who was leaning against the wall with his arms folded.

  “Didn’t you die?” Kirk asked.

  He thought for an instant that Spock was going to smile. But Spock recovered himself in time.

  “Do you want to know your cadets’ efficiency rating—or are you just loitering?”

  “Vulcans are not renowned for their ability to loiter,” Spock said.

  “Or for their ability to admit terrible character flaws, such as that they’re curious.”

  “Indeed, Admiral? If it will raise your opinion of my character, I suppose I must admit to some curiosity.”

  “I haven’t even got to the debriefing room yet, and you want an opinion.” He started down the corridor again, and Spock strode along beside him.

  “I seem to recall a Starfleet admiral who referred to this particular set of debriefings as ‘a damned waste of time,’ ” Spock said. “He had a very strong belief that actions were more important than words.”

  “Did he?” Kirk said. “I don’t believe I know him. Sounds like a hothead to me.”

  “Yes,” Spock said slowly. “Yes, at times he was known as a hothead.”

  Kirk winced at Spock’s use of the past tense. “Spock, those trainees of yours destroyed the simulator and you along with it.”

  “Complete havoc is the usual result when Kobayashi Maru comes upon the scene.” He paused, glanced at Kirk, and continued. “You yourself took the test three times.”

  “No!” Kirk said with mock horror. “Did I?”

  “Indeed. And with a resolution that was, to put it politely, unique.”

  “It was unique when I did it,” Kirk said. “But I think a number of people have tried it since.”

  “Without success, you should add. It was a solution that would not have occurred to a Vulcan.”

  Jim Kirk suddenly felt sick of talking over old times. He changed the subject abruptly. “Speaking of Vulcans, your protégée’s first-rate. A little emotional, maybe—”

  “You must consider her heritage, Jim—and, more important, her background. She is quite naturally somewhat more volatile than—than I, for instance.”

  Kirk could not help laughing. “I’m sorry, Spock. The lieutenant is remarkably self-possessed for someone of her age and experience. I was trying to make a joke. It was pretty feeble, I’ll admit it, but that seems to be about all I’m up to these days.” He sighed. “You know, her tactic might even have worked if we hadn’t added the extra Klingon attack group.” He stopped at the debriefing room. “Well.”

  Spock reached out as Kirk started to go in. He stopped before his hand touched Jim Kirk’s shoulder, but the gesture was enough. Kirk glanced back.

  “Something oppresses you,” Spock said.

  Kirk
felt moved by Spock’s concern.

  “Something…” he said. He wanted to talk to Spock, to someone. But he did not know how to begin. And he had the debriefing to conduct. No, this was not the time. He turned away and went into the debriefing room.

  All those kids.

  They waited for Admiral Kirk in silence, anxious yet eager. Lieutenant Saavik arrived a moment after Kirk sat down; Spock, his usual emotionless self once more, came in quietly and sat at the very back of the room. Jim Kirk was tempted to declare the discussion over before it had begun, but regulations required a debriefing; he had to fill out a report afterward—

  That’s all I ever pay attention to anymore, he thought. Regulations and paperwork.

  He opened the meeting. He had been through it all a hundred times. The usual protocol was to discuss with each student, in reverse order of seniority, what they would have done had they been in command of the ship. Today was no different, and Kirk had heard all the answers before. One would have stuck to regulations and remained outside the Neutral Zone. Another would have sent in a shuttle for reconnaissance.

  Kirk stifled a yawn.

  “Lieutenant Saavik,” he said finally, “have you anything to add? Second thoughts?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Were I confronted with the same events, I would react in the same manner. The details might be different. I see no point to increasing your boredom with trivia.”

  Kirk felt embarrassed to have shown his disinterest so clearly. He reacted rather harshly. “You’d do the same thing, despite knowing it would mean the destruction of your ship and crew?”

  “I would know that it might mean the destruction of my ship and crew, Admiral. If I could not prove that Kobayashi Maru were an illusion, I would answer its distress call.”

  “Lieutenant, are you familiar with Rickoverian paradoxes?”

  “No, sir, I am not.”

  “Let me tell you the prototype. You are on a ship—a sailing ship, an ocean-going vessel. It sinks. You find yourself in a life raft with one other person. The life raft is damaged. It might support one person, but not two. How would you go about persuading the other person to let you have the raft?”