Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (6 page)

“I’m getting nothing, Captain,” Chekov said. Nothing but one case of creeps. “Let’s go.”

He got no reply. He looked up. At the top of the hillock, Captain Terrell stood staring before him, his form vague and blurry in the sand. He gestured quickly. Chekov struggled up the sand dune, trying to run, sliding on the slick, sharp grains. He reached Terrell’s side and stopped, astonished.

The sand dune formed a windbreak for the small hollow before them, a sort of storm’s eye of clearer air. Chekov could see perhaps a hundred meters.

In that hundred meters lay a half-buried group of ruined buildings.

Suddenly he shivered.

“Whatever it is,” Clark Terrell said, “it isn’t pre-biotic.” He stepped over the knife-sharp crest of the dune and slid down its concave leeward side.

After a moment, reluctantly, Chekov followed. The unpleasant feeling of apprehension that had teased and disturbed him ever since they started for Alpha Ceti gripped him tighter, growing toward dread.

Terrell passed the first structure. Chekov discarded any hope that they might have come upon some weird formation of violent wind and alien geology. What they had found was the wreckage of a spaceship.

Chekov would have been willing to bet that it was a human-made spaceship, too. Its lines were familiar. Alien craft always appeared…alien.

“These look like cargo carriers,” Terrell said.

Chekov leaned over to put his faceplate against a porthole, trying to see inside the ruined ship.

A child popped up, laughed silently, and disappeared.

“Bozhemoi!”
Chekov cried, starting violently. He fell backward into the sand.

“Chekov! What the hell—?” Terrell stumbled toward him.

“Face! I saw—face of child!”

He pointed, but the porthole was empty.

Terrell helped him to his feet. “Come on. This place is getting to you.”

“But I
saw
it,” Chekov said.

“Look, there’s the airlock. Let’s check it out.”

“Captain, I have bad feeling—I think we should go back to
Reliant
and look for different test site and pretend we never came here. Lenin himself said, ‘Better part of valor is discretion.’ ”

“Come along,” Terrell said. His tone forbade argument. “And anyway, it was Shakespeare.”

“No, Captain, Lenin. Perhaps other fellow—” Chekov stopped and reminded himself of the way Standard was constructed. “Perhaps the other fellow stole it.”

Terrell laughed, but even that did not make Chekov feel any easier.

Though sand half covered most of the cargo modules, testifying to some considerable time since the crash, the airlock operated smoothly. In this environment, that was possible only if the mechanism had been maintained.

Chekov hung back. “Captain, I don’t think we should go in there. Mister Kyle’s warning—” The electrical disturbances in the atmosphere that had disrupted communications and made scanning so difficult gave problems to the transporter as well; Kyle had said that even a covering of tree branches, or a roof (knowing what they expected to find, Chekov and Terrell had both laughed at the caution), could change beaming up from “just barely possible” to “out of the question.”

“Mister Kyle has one flaw,” Terrell said, “and that is that he invariably errs far on the side of caution. Are you coming?”

“I’ll go in, Captain,” Chekov said reluctantly. “But you stay outside,
pazhalsta,
and keep in contact with ship.”

“Pavel, this is ridiculous. Calm down. I can tell you’re upset—”

On
Reliant,
Chekov occasionally got teased for losing his Standard, in which he was ordinarily fluent, when he was angry or very tired.

Or—though his shipmates had no way of knowing this—when he was terrified.

“Look,” Terrell said. “I’ll go in. If you want to, you can stay here on guard.”

Chekov knew that he could not let Terrell enter the cargo ship alone. Unwillingly, he followed the captain into the airlock.

The inner doors slid open. Chekov had to wait a moment, but after his eyes adjusted to the dimness he saw beds and tables, a book, an empty coffee cup: people lived here. They must have survived the crash on the cargo ship. But where were they?

“We’ve got a breathable atmosphere,” Terrell said. He unfastened his helmet. Chekov glanced at his tricorder. Terrell was right: the proportions of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide were all normal, and there was barely a trace of the noxious chemicals that made up the outside air. Even so, Chekov opened his helmet seal half expecting the burning pungency of acid vapors.

But the place smelled like every dormitory Chekov had ever been in: of sweat and dirty socks.

Outside, the wind scattered sand against the walls. Terrell went farther into the reconverted cargo hold. His footsteps echoed. There were no sounds of habitation; yet the place did not
feel
deserted.

It felt evil.

“What the hell is all this? Did they crash? And where are they?”

Terrell stopped in the entrance to the next chamber, a kitchen.

On the stove, a faint cloud of steam rose from a pot of stew.

Chekov stared at it.

“Captain…”

Terrell was gone. Chekov hurried after him, entering a laboratory, where Terrell poked around among the equipment. He stopped near a large glass tank full of sand. Chekov went toward him, hoping to persuade him to return to the ship, or at least call in a well-armed security team.

“Christ!”

Terrell leapt away from the tank.

Chekov ripped his phaser from the suit’s outer clip and crouched, waiting, ready, but there was nothing to fire at.

“Captain—what—?”

“There’s something in that damned tank!” He approached it cautiously, his hand on his own phaser.

The sand roiled like water. A long shape cut a stroke across the surface, and Chekov flinched back.

“It’s all right,” Terrell said. “It’s just some kind of animal or—”

The quiet gurgle of a child, talking to itself, playing with sounds, cut him off as effectively as a shout or a scream.

“I told you!” Chekov cried. “I told you I saw—”

“Shh.” Terrell started toward the sound, motioning Chekov to follow.

Chekov obeyed, trying to calm himself. So what if there was a child? This was not a world where Chekov would wish to father and try to raise a baby, but obviously at least one couple among the survivors of the cargo ship crash had felt differently. Chekov’s fear was reasonless, close to cowardice—

He stepped through a crumpled and deformed passageway and peered into the next chamber.

The crash had twisted the room around, leaving it tumbled on its side, one wall now the floor, the floor and the ceiling now walls. The change made the proportions odd and disconcerting; worse, the floor was not quite flat, the walls not quite straight.

All alone, in the middle of the room, sitting on the floor—the wall—the baby reached out to them and gurgled and giggled with joy. Terrell climbed down from the sideways entrance and approached the child tentatively.

“Well, kid, hi, didn’t your folks even leave a baby-sitter?”

Chekov looked around the room. The wall that the ceiling had turned into displayed a collection of sharp, shining swords; Chekov recognized only the wavy-bladed
kris.
He recognized few of the titles of the books on a shelf nearby:
King Lear?
That sounded like imperialist propaganda to him.
Bible?
Twentieth-century mythology, if he recalled correctly.

And then he saw, hanging from the floor-wall, the ship’s insignia, and the reason for his terror came at him in a crushing blow.

Botany Bay.

“Bozhemoi,”
Chekov whispered, “
Botany Bay,
no, it can’t be….”

Terrell chucked the baby gently under the chin with his forefinger. “What’d you say, Pavel?”

Chekov lunged forward, grabbed Terrell by the shoulder, and dragged him toward the passageway.

“Wait a minute! What’s the matter with you?”

“We’ve got to get out of here! Now! Captain, please trust me, hurry!”

He forcibly pushed the bigger man up and through the hatch and climbed after him. Angry now, Terrell tried to turn back.

“But the child—”

“I can’t explain now!” Chekov cried. “No time! Hurry!” He pushed the captain down the battered companionway, which was too narrow to allow Terrell to put up much struggle. Chekov fumbled with his helmet, got it fastened, and turned on the suit’s communicator.

“Chekov to
Reliant,
come in
Reliant.
Mayday, mayday—”

Static answered his pleas.

By the time they reached the laboratory, Terrell had caught his urgency or decided to humor him now and bust him back to ensign later—Chekov did not care which. Terrell put on his helmet and fastened it as they reached the kitchen and ran into the connecting hall. The dormitory was still deserted. Chekov began to hope they might get outside and contact the ship in time. They plunged into the airlock. Chekov continued to call
Reliant,
hoping to get through, determined to reach it the instant he and Terrell left the building.

The door opened. Chekov bolted forward.

He stopped.

They were surrounded by suited figures, each one armed, and every weapon pointed straight at them.

“Beam us up!” Chekov cried into his transmitter.

As he grabbed at his phaser, one of the suited figures lunged forward, disarmed him, and knocked him back into the airlock.

High above, in
Reliant,
Mister Kyle tried again to raise Terrell and Chekov. They had only been out of touch for a little while, true, but the conditions were so terrible on the surface of Alpha Ceti VI that he would have preferred continuous contact.

“Try again,” Beach said unnecessarily.

“
Reliant
to Captain Terrell, Kyle here. Do you copy, Captain Terrell? Come in, Captain, please respond….”

He got no reply.

Beach let out his breath in an irritated snort.

“Let’s give them a little more time.”

Kyle knew as well as Beach did how much Clark Terrell hated to be second-guessed; nevertheless, he was about to protest when a sudden squawk came through his headphone and echoed on the speakers. He flinched.

“What was that?” Beach said. “Did you hear it?”

“I heard it.” He channeled the transmission through the computer, enhancing and filtering it. “Stoney, I want to put more power to the sensors.”

“You already overrode the alarm—much more and you’ll blow out the circuits completely.”

“I think they’re in trouble.”

The transmission returned from enhancement.

“Eeeeebeeeesssss…” squealed out of the speaker. Kyle slapped his console and forced the signal through the program again.

“Beeeeeeussss…”

And again.

Though flattened and distorted, it was Chekov’s voice.

“Beam us…”

Kyle looked up at Beach.

“Beam us…”

“Okay—more power,” Beach said. “Get a lock on them!”

“Beam us…”

“Beam us…”

“Beam us…”

When Captain Terrell tried to explain that he and Chekov had been looking for survivors, that they were, in effect, a rescue party, one of the survivors expressed gratitude by backhanding him with the full weight of body and arm and massive suit glove. Terrell sagged.

Chekov did not try to protest their capture. He knew the attempt would be futile.

He and Terrell still wore their suits, though their helmets and phasers had been taken. Escape seemed impossible. Besides the four people holding them, twelve or fifteen others stood in silence around them.

As if they were waiting.

Chekov felt more frightened of what—whom—they were waiting for than of all of them together. Without actually looking at his phaser, Chekov set himself to get to it. He forced himself to relax; he pretended to give up. When in response one of his captors just slightly relaxed the hold, Chekov lunged forward.

He was not fast enough. His hands were jammed up under his shoulder blades, twisting his arms painfully. He cried out. Terrell’s captors jerked him upright, too, though he was still half-stunned.

Chekov had no other chance to resist. The pressure on his arms did not ease: it intensified. Through a haze of pain, he sought desperately through old memories to recall everything he could about
Botany Bay.
So much had happened in so short a time that while he remembered the incident itself with terrible clarity, some of the details had blurred. It was a long time ago, too, fifteen years…

The airlock hummed into a cycle. The guards forced Chekov to attention, pulled Terrell upright, and turned them both to face the doorway. The bruise on Terrell’s face was deep red against his black skin. Sweat ran down Chekov’s sides.

A tall figure, silhouetted by the light, paused, stepped out of the chamber, and slowly, deliberately, removed its helmet.

Chekov’s breath sighed out in a soft, desperate moan.

“Khan….”

The man had changed: he appeared far more than fifteen years older. His long hair was now white, streaked with iron gray. But the aura of power and self-assurance was undiminished; the changes meant nothing. Chekov recognized him instantly.

Khan Noonien Singh glanced toward him; only then did Chekov realize he had spoken the name aloud. Khan’s dark, direct gaze made the blood drain from Chekov’s face.

Khan approached and looked them over. The unrelenting inspection shocked Terrell fully back to consciousness, but Khan dismissed him with a shrug.

“I don’t know you,” he said. He turned toward Chekov, who shrank away.

“But
you,
” he said softly, gently, “I remember you, Mister Chekov. I never hoped to see
you
again.”

Chekov closed his eyes to shut out the sight of Khan’s terrifying expression, which was very near a smile.

“Chekov, who is this man?” Terrell tried vainly to reassert some authority.

“He was…experiment, Captain. And criminal.” Though he feared angering Khan, he could think of no other way, and no satisfactory way at all, to describe him. “He’s from…twentieth century.” He was an experiment, a noble dream gone wrong. Genetic engineering had enhanced his vast intelligence; nature had conveyed upon him great presence and charisma. What had caused his overwhelming need for power, Pavel Chekov did not know.

Khan Singh’s only reaction to Chekov’s statement was a slow smile.

“What’s the meaning of this treatment?” Terrell said angrily. “I demand—”

“You, sir, are in a position to demand nothing.” Khan’s voice was very mild. He could be charming—Chekov recalled that all too well. “I, on the other hand, am in a position to grant nothing.” He gestured to the people, to the surroundings. “You see here all that remains of the crew of my ship,
Botany Bay,
indeed all that remains of the ship itself, marooned here fifteen years ago by Captain James T. Kirk.”

The words were simply explanatory, but the tone was chilling.

“I can grant nothing, for we have nothing,” Khan said.

Terrell appealed to Khan’s ragtag group of men and women.

“Listen to me, you people—”

“Save your strength, Captain,” Khan said. “They have been sworn to me, and I to them, since two hundred years before you were born. We owe each other our lives.” He glanced kindly at Chekov. “My dear Mister Chekov, do you mean you never told him the tale?” He returned his attention to Terrell. “Do you mean James Kirk never amused you by telling the story of how he ‘rescued’ my ship and its company from the cryogenic prison of deep space? He never made sport of us in public? Captain, I’m touched.”

His words were filled with quiet, deadly venom.

“I don’t even know Admiral Kirk!”

“
Admiral
Kirk? Ah, so he gained a reward for his brave deeds and his acts of chivalry—for exiling seventy people to a barren heap of sand!”

“You lie!” Chekov shouted. “I saw the world we left you on! It was beautiful; it was like a garden—flowers, fruit trees, streams…and its moon!” Chekov remembered the moon most clearly, an enormous silver globe hanging over the land, ten times the size of the moon on Earth, for Captain Kirk had left Khan and his followers on one of a pair of worlds, a twin system in which planet and satellite were of a size. But one was living, the other lifeless.

“Yes,” Khan said, in a rough whisper. “Alpha Ceti V was that, for a while.”

Chekov gasped.
“Alpha Ceti V!”
The name came back, and all the pieces fell into place: no official records, for fear Khan Singh would free himself again; the discrepancies between the probe records and the data
Reliant
collected. Now, too late, Chekov understood why he had lived the last few days under an increasing pall of dread.

“My child,” Khan said, his tone hurt, “did you forget? Did you forget where you left me? You did, I see…ah, you ordinaries with your pitiful memories.”

If the twin worlds had still existed, Chekov would have seen them on approach and remembered, and warned Terrell away.

“Why did you leave Alpha Ceti V for its twin?” Chekov asked. “What happened to it?”

“
This
is Alpha Ceti V!” Khan cried.

Chekov stared at him, confused.

Khan lowered his voice again, but his deep black eyes retained their dangerous glitter.

“Alpha Ceti VI, our beautiful moon—you did not survey that, did you, Mister Chekov? You never bothered to note its tectonic instability. It exploded, Mister Chekov. It exploded! It laid waste to our planet.
I
enabled us to survive, I, with nothing to work with but the trivial contents of these cargo holds.”

“Captain Kirk was your host—” Chekov said.

“And he never appreciated the honor fate offered him. I was a prince on Earth; I stood before millions and led them. He could not bear the thought that I might return to power. He could only conquer me by playing at being a god. His Zeus to my Prometheus: he put me here, in adamantine chains, to guard a barren rock!”

“You tried to steal his ship—”

Ignoring his words, Khan bent down and looked straight into Pavel Chekov’s eyes. “Are you his eagle, Mister Chekov? Did you come to tear out my entrails?”

“—and you tried to murder him!”

Khan turned away, and gazed at Clark Terrell. “What of you, Captain? Perhaps you are my Chiron. Did you come to take my place in purgatory?

“I…I don’t know what you mean,” Terrell said.

“No, you do not! You know nothing of sacrifice. Not you, not James T. Kirk—” he snarled the name, “—no one but the courageous Lieutenant McGivers, who defied your precious admiral, who gave up everything to join me in exile.”

Khan’s voice broke, and he fell silent. He turned away.

“A plague upon you all.”

He swung around on them again. His eyes were bright with tears, but his self-control had returned. The horrifying gentleness of his voice warned of anger under so much pressure it must, inevitably, erupt.

“You did not come seeking me,” he said. “You believed this was Alpha Ceti VI. Why would you choose to visit a barren world? Why are you here?”

Chekov said nothing.

“Foolish child.” As carefully as a father caressing a baby, Khan touched his cheek. His fingers stroked down to Pavel’s chin. Then he grabbed his jaw and brutally forced up his head.

Just as suddenly he spun away, grabbed Terrell by the throat, and jerked him off his feet.

“Why?”

Terrell shook his head. Khan gripped harder.

Choking, Terrell clawed at Khan’s gloved hand. Khan watched, a smile on his face, while the captain slowly and painfully lost consciousness.

“It does not please him to answer me,” Khan said. His lips curled in a cruelly simple smile. “Well, no matter.” He opened his fist, and Terrell’s limp body collapsed on the floor.

Chekov twisted, trying to free himself. The two men holding him nearly broke his arms. Chekov gasped. Terrell curled around himself, coughing. But at least he was alive.

“You’ll tell me willingly soon enough,” Khan said. He made a quick motion with his head. His people dragged Chekov and Terrell into the laboratory and dumped them next to the sand tank.

Khan strode past them, picked up a small strainer, and dipped it into the tank. He lifted it and sand showered out, sliding down through the mesh and flung up by the struggling of the creatures he had snared.

“Did you, perhaps, come exploring? Then let me introduce you to the only remaining species native to Alpha Ceti V.” He thrust the strainer in front of Chekov. “Ceti eels,” Khan said. The last of the sand spilled away. The two long, thin eels writhed together, lashing their tails and snapping their narrow pointed jaws. They were the sickly yellow of the sand. They had no eyes. “When our world became desert, only a desert creature could survive.” Khan took Chekov’s helmet from one of his people, an intense blond young man.

“Thank you, Joachim.” He tilted the strainer so one of the eels flopped into the helmet.

Joachim spilled the second eel into Terrell’s helmet.

“They killed, they slowly and horribly killed, twenty of my people,” Khan said. “One of them…was my wife.”

“Oh, no….” Chekov whispered. He remembered Lieutenant McGivers. She had been tall and beautiful and classically elegant, but, more important, kind and sweet and wise. He had only ever had one conversation with her, and that by chance—he was an ensign, assigned to the night watch, when she was on the
Enterprise,
and ensigns and officers did not mix much. But once, she had talked with him. For days afterward, he had wished he were older, more experienced, of a more equivalent rank…. He had wished many things.

When she left the
Enterprise
to go with Khan, Ensign Pavel Chekov had locked himself in his cabin and cried. How could she go with Khan? He had never understood. He did not understand now.

“You let her die,” he said.

Khan’s venomous glance transfixed him.

“You may blame her death on your Admiral Kirk,” he said. “Do you want to know
how
she died?” He swirled Chekov’s helmet in circles. Pavel could hear the eel sliding around inside. “The young eel enters its victim’s body, seeks out the brain, and entwines itself around the cerebral cortex. As a side effect, the prey becomes extremely susceptible to suggestion.” He came toward Chekov. “The eel grows, my dear Pavel Chekov, within the captive’s brain. First it causes madness. Then the host becomes paralyzed—unable to move, unable to feel anything but the twisting of the creature within the skull. I learned the progression well. I watched it happen…to my wife.”

He lingered over the description, articulating every word with care and precision, as if he were torturing himself, embracing the agony as a fitting punishment.

“Khan!” Pavel cried. “Captain Kirk was only doing his duty! Listen to me, please—”

“Indeed I will, Pavel Chekov, in a few moments you will speak to me as I wish.”

Pavel felt himself being pushed forward in a travesty of a bow.

He fought, but the guards forced him down. Khan let him look into his helmet, where the eel squirmed furiously.

“Now you must meet my pet, Mister Chekov. You will find that it is not…quite…domesticated….”

Khan slammed the helmet over Pavel’s head and locked it into its fastenings.

The eel tumbled against Pavel’s face, lashing his cheek with its tail. In a panic, he clawed at his faceplate. Khan stood before him, watching, smiling. Pavel grabbed the helmet latches, but Khan’s people pulled his hands away and held him still.

The eel, sensing the heat of a living body, ceased its frantic thrashing and began to crawl, probing purposefully with its sharp little snout. Pavel shook his head violently. The eel curled its body through his hair, anchoring itself, and continued its relentless search.

It curved down behind his ear, slid beneath the lobe, and glided up again.

It touched his eardrum.

He heard the rush of blood, and its flowing warmth caressed his cheek.