Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (60 page)

At sunset, Jim cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders, and rose. It would be all too easy to withdraw into his grief. But he still had responsibilities, even if the end of his responsibility turned out to be leading friends to the ends of their careers, or worse.

He climbed down the ladder and waited for the officers of the destroyed starship
Enterprise
to gather.

Montgomery Scott was the first to straggle across the plain toward the
Bounty.
The chief engineer appeared exhausted. He had not been himself since the destruction of the
Enterprise—
nor had anyone in the group, but the starship’s last mission had hit Scott particularly hard. He lost his beloved nephew, Peter Preston, during Khan Noonien Singh’s suicidal attack. Then he lost his ship. Scott was chief engineer of the
Enterprise
before Jim took command and after flag rank took Jim away from starships and from space. Jim could hardly count the times Scott had pulled some mechanical or electronic rabbit out of an invisible hat to keep the
Enterprise
from certain destruction. This time Scott had done more than fail to save the starship. He had concurred in its annihilation.

“Good evenin’, Admiral,” the engineer said.

“Hello, Scotty. Don’t go in yet. We’ll vote tonight.”

“Aye, sir.”

They waited. Pavel Chekov and Commander Uhura crossed the plain together. As they approached, Pavel, the youngest of the group, made another in a series of jokes about serving on ore carriers. The evening wind ruffled his dark hair. As collected and cool as always, Uhura managed to smile at Chekov’s joke.

“We vote tonight,” Jim said. Serving on an ore carrier was perhaps the best they could hope for. Even Chekov’s usually irrepressible sense of humor crumbled.

As for Uhura, Jim could not tell what she felt or what she thought. During their entire three months on Vulcan, she had never revealed any discouragement. More than once, her strength and certainty had kept the group’s morale from bottoming out.

Sulu ran toward the ship from the other side of the plain. Sweat plastered his straight black hair to his forehead.

In choosing to help Jim fulfill Sarek’s request, the young commander had given up more than anyone else. Had he remained on Earth, he would now have his own command. The starship
Excelsior
had been taken from Sulu and given to another officer because of James Kirk. Sulu had never voiced a word of regret over the choice he had made.

During their exile, Sulu had begun studying a Vulcan martial art. Tonight, as he approached, Jim saw a new bruise forming on Sulu’s wrist. The Vulcans described the art as meditative. Jim had watched one training session, and he considered the art brutal. Concerned about his officer, Jim had suggested two months ago that Sulu might consider getting more rest. Sulu replied in the most civil terms imaginable that Admiral Kirk should mind his own business.

And Sulu had been right. Now he looked as elemental as the blade of a saber, as if he had deliberately tested himself, seeking and finding a point beyond regret or fear. Vulcan’s heat and gravity had purified him to essentials, and tempered him to steel.

McCoy climbed down the ladder. The group was complete.

“Have you all decided?” Jim said.

“Is nothing to decide, Admiral,” Chekov said. “We return to Earth, with you.”

“How do you know I’m planning to return?” Jim said.

At that, even Uhura looked shocked. “Admiral!”

“I bear the responsibility for what’s happened,” Jim said. “No, don’t object. If I return alone, Starfleet may choose to overlook the rest of you. If I don’t return, they may concentrate on finding me and leave you in peace. At the embassy back on Earth, Sarek granted Uhura asylum. The Vulcans will never break that promise. If any of the rest of you request it, I’m certain Sarek will arrange your protection.”

“And spend the rest of our lives learning logic on Vulcan?” McCoy said. “Not likely.”

“Any of you who wish it could take the
Bounty
to one of the colony worlds, out by the boundary, where people don’t ask too many questions.”

Chekov laughed. “Even on boundary, sir, people would ask questions of human people flying Klingon fighter. Even disguised as it is.” He gestured toward the ship’s new name.

McCoy snorted. “Come on, Jim, enough of this. You’re not about to become a colonist—or a pirate—and we all know it. Let’s vote.”

“Very well,” Jim said. “All those in favor of returning to Earth…”

Sulu raised his hand. His motion was like a challenge, not a gesture of defeat. McCoy and Uhura and Chekov followed his lead. Finally, listlessly, Scott joined the others.

“Scotty, are you sure?”

“Aye, sir, I just…I just keep thinkin’…”

“I know, Scotty. I know.”

Jim, too, raised his hand. He gazed at each of the others in turn, then nodded.

“The record will show,” he said, “that the commander and officers of the late starship
Enterprise
have voted unanimously to return to Earth to face the consequences of their actions in the rescue of their comrade, Captain Spock.” He hesitated. He tried to express his gratitude for their loyalty, but the words would not come. “Thank you all,” he said, his voice tight. “Repair stations, please.”

At first no one had believed the ship would fly again. At the beginning, Scott vehemently denied any possibility of making the ship spaceworthy. Sulu gracefully argued him into a challenge that interested him enough to put at least a hairline crack in his depression. Throughout the endeavor, Scott alternated between bleak despair at the monumental task and grim determination to conquer all the difficulties.

Every time they solved one problem, another came up. Now Jim understood how the captain of an eighteenth-century sailing ship must have felt, stranded in the New World, thousands of miles from home, attempting to repair a broken mast or a stove-in hull. But Jim could not go into the forest, cut down a tree, and fashion from it a new piece of equipment (Vulcan had no forests, in any event, and the citizens protected the few ancient trees that remained); he could not repair the hull, even temporarily, by stretching a canvas sail over the holes. His job had become one of convincing Vulcan quartermasters and bureaucrats that giving him and his people the equipment they needed made perfectly logical sense.

Jim would have preferred to go into a forest and cut down a tree.

Jim found Scott. The engineer stood beneath the body of the little ship, gazing critically at a patch on the hull.

“Mister Scott, how soon can we get under way?”

“Gi’ me one more day, sir,” Scott said. “The damage control is easy. Reading Klingon is hard.”

Jim nodded, straight-faced, and refrained from reminding Scott of all the times he had declared the project impossible. Scott climbed up the landing ladder and disappeared inside.

McCoy stopped next to Jim and folded his arms across his chest. “They could at least send a ship for us.”

Jim had neglected to tell McCoy about his argument with Admiral Cartwright. The doctor did not need any more stress.

“What do you have in mind, Bones?” Jim said, trying to be jocular. “A nice little VIP yacht?”

“They should insist on it. Instead of a court-martial—!”

“I lost the
Enterprise,
Bones!”

“You lost the
Lydia Sutherland,
too. They didn’t court-martial you that time.”

“But I was a hero that time, Bones. This time…” He shrugged. “Starfleet could have waived court-martial. They didn’t choose to. Besides, it isn’t the trial that matters, it’s the verdict.”

“The verdict where we’re all sentenced to spend the rest of our lives mining borite? It’s adding insult to injury for us to have to come home in this Klingon flea trap.”

“Don’t let Commander Sulu hear you say that. Anyway, I’d just as soon go home under our own steam. And we could learn a thing or two from this flea trap. Its cloaking device cost us a lot.”

McCoy glanced up the landing ladder and squared his shoulders. He took a deep breath of the dusty air, as if he could stock up before having to go inside. “I just wish we could use it to cloak the smell.” He climbed up the ladder and disappeared into the
Bounty.

Saavik sat cross-legged in her spare stone chamber. She let her hands rest lightly on her knees, closed her eyes, and settled her thoughts.

Saavik had dreamed of coming to Vulcan since she learned of its existence and of her own heritage. She felt more comfortable here than on any other world to which she had traveled, even Earth, where she had spent some years, and Hellguard, where she had spent her childhood. Like most other Romulan-Vulcan half-breeds, she had been abandoned very young. Her usefulness to her Romulan parent ended with her birth. Hellguard’s usefulness to the Romulans ended soon thereafter. Only the arrival of a Vulcan exploratory party saved Saavik from a short, hard life of struggle for subsistence. When they found her, she was a filthy and illiterate little thief. But Spock detected potential in her. When all the other members of the exploration team preferred to pretend the half-breeds never existed, Spock rescued her, arranged for her education, and sponsored her entrance into Starfleet.

Since his return from the Genesis world, Spock had not spoken to her. The revival had changed him. No one but Spock knew what he recalled from his past life, and what he had to relearn. Perhaps he had forgotten her. She was too proud to plead for his attention, and she was trying too hard to be a proper Vulcan to admit that she missed his friendship. Even if he did forget her, and never remembered her again, she would always be grateful to him for giving her the chance to become a civilized being.

In his earlier life, Spock had acknowledged her existence, but Saavik still did not know why. She believed herself to be the product of abduction and coercion, while Spock descended on his father’s side from a Vulcan family renowned and respected for centuries. He commanded respect with his very name, both because of his family and because of his own achievements. Saavik did not even possess a proper Vulcan name.

The single similarity between them was that neither was completely Vulcan. Even that similarity held great differences. Mister Spock’s mother was a human being. Amanda Grayson descended from a human family whose accomplishments could not be denied, even if its lineage could be traced only ten generations. Her own accomplishments rivaled any Vulcan’s. Even if Amanda had possessed no background worth mentioning, Saavik would have respected and admired her. In their brief acquaintance, Amanda had shown her great kindness. She had made it possible for Saavik to stay on Vulcan.

Saavik, on the other hand, did not even know which of her parents had been Vulcan and which Romulan. She had gone to some trouble to avoid finding out, for tracing her Vulcan parent could gain her no acceptance.

She absently touched her shoulder, rubbing the complex scar of the family mark she bore. Someday the information it contained would reveal her Romulan parent, upon whom she had sworn revenge.

Saavik brought herself to a more recent past.

“Computer.”

“Ready,” replied the discipline’s ubiquitous, invisible computer.

“Record deposition.”

“Ready.”

“I am Saavik, lieutenant of Starfleet. I last served on the starship
Grissom,
an unarmed exploratory vessel, Captain J. T. Esteban, commanding. Captain Esteban proceeded to the Mutara sector, conveying Doctor David Marcus to the Genesis world. Doctor Marcus was a member of the group that designed Genesis.

“
Grissom
warped into orbit around Genesis. David Marcus and I transported to the surface to investigate the effect of the Genesis torpedo. We found an Earth-type planet with a fully evolved biosphere. Tracking the signals of a being more highly evolved than the Genesis data allowed, a being that should not have existed on the new world, we discovered a Vulcan child of the age of about ten Earth-standard years. It was the opinion of Doctor Marcus that the Genesis wave had regenerated the physical form of Captain Spock, who had been buried in space and whose casket and shroud we found empty on the surface of the world.

“Soon thereafter, we lost contact with
Grissom.
Some hours later, a Klingon expedition arrived on Genesis. They made prisoners of Doctor Marcus, the young Vulcan, and me. The Vulcan and the planet both aged rapidly. It became clear that the Vulcan would die if he was not removed from the influence of the degenerating Genesis wave.”

Again, she did not reveal her knowledge of the reasons for the degeneration. A flaw in the Genesis program made the whole system dangerously unstable; it eventually caused the new world to decay into protomatter, to destroy itself. David had suspected this might happen, but in his enthusiasm for the project he persuaded himself he was wrong. Saavik saw no reason to tarnish his reputation as a scientist. Doing so could only cause more pain.

“The Klingon expeditionary force refused to believe the truth about Genesis, that the experiment had failed. They demanded the equations, believing Genesis to be a powerful weapon. Knowing that it could be used in such a way, David—Doctor Marcus—bravely refused to reveal the information, despite threats on all our lives.