STAR TREK - TOS (4 page)

[20]standard-model humans, risking their lives to save another batch of allegedly superhuman men and women.

But what else am I supposed to do?
Kirk thought. Genetically enhanced or not, those were people down there in that dome.
I need to rescue them now
—
and worry about what they mean to the
Federation later.

Steel bulkheads creaked alarmingly, fighting a losing battle against the colossal pressure outside. Kirk heard Lerner gulp dryly, and wished he hadn’t had to drag the lieutenant along on what was starting to look (and sound) like a suicide mission. At least the
Enterprise
was safely in Spock’s hands. ...

“Captain! Look!” Lerner croaked hoarsely, “The dome!”

Lifting his gaze from the navigational controls, Kirk saw what the security officer was reacting to. A kilometer below, the injured region of the dome suddenly began to repair itself. Fresh green tissue billowed outward, displacing charred and blackened cellulose. The depression, where the toxic atmosphere had almost burst through the dome’s protective skin, now filled up with moist and shining new life, bright chlorophyll-green. Miraculously, the huge biological organism appeared to have received some sort of rejuvenating boost—and none too soon.

Intuitively, he knew that Dr. McCoy was responsible.
Good work, Bones,
Kirk thought, a smile upon his parched and cracking lips.
That’s what I call a house call!

He shared a grin with Lerner, which ended abruptly when the portside wall of the cabin crumpled inwardly, forming a wedge-shaped protrusion into the passenger area. Twisted duranium shrieked in protest, and the[21] entire shuttle lurched sideways, throwing the two men hard to the left, so that only their safety straps kept them from tumbling out of their seats. Bright red warning lights flashed all over Kirk’s control panel, reporting damage, both major and minor, to nearly every system.

“Attention!” a strident computerized voice announced. “Hull integrity compromised! Repeat, hull integrity compromised.”

Tell me something I don’t know,Kirk thought in exasperation, silencing the annoying voice with the flick of a switch. He hauled himself back into an upright seated position and wrestled with the throttle until the shuttle tilted back into what felt like a level orientation. Just as he succeeded at righting the craft, however, another red light flared to life before his eyes. Kirk’s stomach turned over queasily as up and down realigned themselves by about forty degrees.
Well, there went the artificial gravity,
he realized.

Switching gravities was the least of his problems. He caught a sulfurous whiff in the air, and looked back over his shoulder to see a thin tendril of brownish-yellow vapor creeping into the cabin through an infinitesimal crack in a rear upper corner of the passenger area. A burning sensation rapidly developed in his nostrils and throat.

At least we don’t have to worry about explosive decompression,he thought with a touch of gallows humor. The pressure outside was so intense that the shuttle’s atmosphere couldn’t escape if Kirk wanted it to; the problem was keeping Sycorax’s unforgiving climate from crushing the shuttle like an eggshell.

“Captain!” Lerner yanked his hands back from the deflector controls as a fountain of white-hot sparks

[22]erupted from the panel. Through the forward window, made of reinforced transparent aluminum, Kirk saw the shuttle’s diverted deflector beam flicker weakly before evaporating completely. “We’ve lost the deflectors,” Lerner reported, choking on the caustic fumes contaminating the air.

“They’re—gone, sir!”

“Acknowledged,” Kirk coughed back. With luck, he hoped, maybe they’re not needed anymore. He stared at the freshly healed area upon the dome, now roughly the shape of Jupiter’s famous spot and glistening with renewed strength and resilience. For the time being, the dome seemed capable of defending itself; he could only pray that its growth spurt would last until the colonists got their all-important force field working at full capacity again.

He and Lerner were in the most danger now; unfortunately, there were no longer any deflectors to divert back to the shuttle. “Prepare for emergency beam-out,” he ordered Lerner, shouting to be heard over the sound of warping metal. A tube ruptured within the shuttle’s ceiling, spraying vaporized coolant into the cabin, further polluting the increasingly unbreathable air.

“Warning!” the computer wailed again, the extreme conditions overriding the captain’s previous attempt to mute its Cassandra-like prophecies of doom. “Hull integrity failing. Ten seconds to total structural collapse.”

If we don’t move quickly,Kirk realized,
then our remains are going to end up compacted together in
a very small duranium urn.

“Coordinates?” Lerner asked, batting away smoke and sparks to get at the transporter controls.

[23]Kirk’s gaze stayed fixed on the fresh, verdant spot in the dome below them. With the
Enterprise
still shielded against a possible Klingon attack, there was only one escape route available to them: the one part of the dome still unprotected by a force field. “Straight ahead,” he ordered Lerner. “Right through that big green doorway.”

This should work,he thought,
provided the colonists don’t repair the shield in the next ten seconds.

And as long as the shuttle’s transporters were working better than the gravity or the deflectors.

“Five seconds to structural collapse,” the computer informed them helpfully.

“Locking on,” Lerner reported. “Transporting ... now!”

As the familiar static tingle of the transporter beams swept over him, Kirk considered the weak spot in the colony’s force field; in a way it was not unlike another dangerous wound in a planet’s defenses: the gaping hole in Earth’s ozone layer that Khan Noonien Singh first discovered back in the 1980s.

The hole Khan later turned to his own advantage. ...

TUAMOTO ISLANDS

FRENCH POLYNESIA

JUNE 14, 1992

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FEETabove the concrete launch pad, Roberta Lincoln crawled out onto one of the horizontal swing arms of the towering rocket gantry. A small green gecko scurried out of her way as the fortyish American woman clambered on her hands and knees across the steel bridge toward her target: an Ariane rocket primed for takeoff.

The more things change, the more they really do stay the same,Roberta thought wryly Twenty-five years ago, her longtime friend and supervisor, Gary Seven, had crept across a similar elevated platform to sabotage another rocket launch. His mission then had been to prevent a weapon of mass destruction from being launched into orbit, initiating a full-scale outer space arms race. A quarter century later, Roberta’s agenda[26]was pretty much the same.
The only difference is that this time I’m the one
performing without a net.

Just to play it safe, however, she clipped one end of a safety cord to the metal grating beneath her, keeping the other end securely attached to her belt. A cool, dry wind rustled her honey-blond hair as she came within reach of the powerful European booster rocket, designed to place commercial satellites in orbit high above the Earth. Roberta briefly wondered what kind of bribes and/or extortion Khan had employed to get his hands on the Ariane, let alone transport it to this remote launch site in the South Pacific, previously occupied by the French government’s now-defunct nuclear testing program.

From her lofty perch upon the gantry, Roberta could look out over the entire atoll: a circular ring of greenery surrounding a large moonlit lagoon. Leafy palm trees and mangroves covered much of the island, although she could also spot the lights of the-Mission Control center, nestled amidst the lush tropical flora.

“Let’s just hope they don’t spot me,” she whispered to herself, acutely aware that her green camouflage shorts and tank top, which had blended perfectly with the tropical shrubbery on her way here, now clashed alarmingly with the industrial-red paint job on the rocket gantry. According to their most recent intel, Khan himself intended to be present for this launch, and Roberta sincerely hoped to get in and out of Muroroa without actually running into the man himself.

The last thing I need right now is a reunion with that smug, so-called superman,she thought. She and Seven[27]had their hands full these days, coping with the crisis in Bosnia, not to mention all the other international mischief stirred up by Khan and his genetically engineered siblings. In their eagerness to assert their self-proclaimed destinies as rulers of the Earth, the Children of Chrysalis, as Roberta still thought of them, had sparked civil wars and unrest all over the globe, in Eastern Europe, Liberia, Somalia, Peru, and elsewhere. This had not made her and Seven’s primary mission—preventing World War III—any easier.
And to think that, after the Cold War ended, I had briefly thought that Seven
and I could retire!
If anything, their job had gotten even more complicated since the Berlin Wall came down.

And now Khan had to up the ante with this stunt! Roberta scowled and glanced toward the horizon, glimpsing a faint rosy tint where the night sky met the Pacific. The Ariane was scheduled to launch at dawn, so Roberta knew she had to act soon; the sun rose very quickly this close to the equator.

Her all-purpose servo device, cunningly disguised as a silver fountain pen, projected a beam of white light onto the outer casing of the Ariane’s main rocket, which was flanked by two solid-fuel boosters, intended to provide the initial thrust upon lift-off. According to the diagrams she’d memorized earlier, the rocket’s primary guidance system was just behind the metal panel directly in front of her, bearing the
snazzy
blue logo of Arianespace, the French manufacturer of the rocket. Roberta’s plan was to tweak the controls so that the rocket would self-destruct harmlessly in the upper atmosphere, taking its insidious cargo with it. With any luck, Khan’s latest scheme would be over before it even began.

[28]That was the plan, at least. Trying hard not to think about the twenty-five tons of liquid hydrogen stored beneath her, just waiting to be ignited, she switched the servo to laser mode and began cutting a hole in the side of the rocket with what she hoped was surgical precision. The ruby-red beam traced a charred black line around the company logo, quickly forming a complete loop. Roberta gave the melted metal a few minutes to cool, then carefully lifted the newly created circular segment away from the rest of the rocket, revealing the intricate circuitry beneath.

Pretty smooth,she congratulated herself. A few deft moves and—
voilà
—Khan’s high-tech hardware was more exposed than Sharon Stone. Grinning triumphantly, she cautiously laid the displaced metal disk aside, making sure it wouldn’t topple off the edge of the gantry, and turned her servo back into a flashlight. She gripped the slender silver instrument between her teeth, to keep the incandescent beam focused in front of her, then reached carefully into the electronic innards of the Ariane satellite launcher.

A high-voltage jolt caused her entire body to stiffen in shock. A moment before she lost consciousness, she thanked heaven for the safety cord binding her to the steel platform. At least she wasn’t going to fall to her death! ...

“She’s waking up, “Your Excellency,” a gruff male voice intoned, penetrating the fog receding from her brain. Roberta struggled to lift her eyelids, half-surprised to find herself alive and not electrocuted.

She suspected the good news ended there.

[29]“Thank you, Joaquin,” a familiar voice replied, confirming Roberta’s worst expectations.
Oh no!
she thought, genuine apprehension sending a chill through her recently dormant body As far as she could tell she seemed to be lying sideways on some sort of couch or cushion.
Not him!

Blinking, she opened her eyes to see a tall Indian man looking down at her with an amused expression on his strong, handsome features. Piercing brown eyes inspected her as they might an exotic animal securely caged in a zoo; that is, with total confidence and an unchallenged sense of superiority. He was clean-shaven, with thick black hair tied neatly behind his head, and wore a spotless white Nehru jacket with matching cotton slacks. “Ah, Ms. Lincoln,” he greeted her with a mocking pretense of warmth.

“How good of you to rejoin us!”

“Hello, Khan,” she said icily. Raising herself to a seated position, she tried to stand up, but found her legs still a little too wobbly. A quick glance around revealed that she was in a luxuriously appointed office decorated with traditional Polynesian art. An original Gauguin hung on one wall, while an authentic Melanesian wood carving of a cruising shark sat atop an executive-size desk. A colorful mat, woven from dyed pandanus fibers, carpeted the floor. Roberta did her best to meet Khan’s gaze defiantly, despite a profusion of tropical butterflies in her stomach. “Long time, no smirk.”

Looming a few feet behind Khan, a large, muscular brute with a sullen expression and light-brown hair glowered at Roberta. A plain black T-shirt was stretched tautly over a Schwarzenegger-size torso,[30]

above a pair of simple gray slacks. Compared to Khan’s crisp, snow-white suit, the scowling bruiser’s attire was dull and unremarkable, except for a large brass belt buckle that bore the visage of a snarling grizzly bear. “You will address His Excellency with more respect!” he warned her balefully, raising a meaty hand as he stepped toward her ominously. She flinched in anticipation of the blow, which would no doubt carry the full force of genetically augmented bones and sinews.

But Khan shook his head, dismissing his henchman’s concerns with an airy gesture. “No need to stand on formality,” he insisted. “Ms. Lincoln and I are old friends.” He smiled coldly at her. “Isn’t that so?”

In a manner of speaking,Roberta admitted silently. She had first met Khan Noonien Singh eighteen years ago, in a vast underground laboratory hidden beneath the scorched sands of India’s desolate Great Thar Desert. Khan had only been four years old then, one of hundreds of genetically engineered children produced by the top-secret Chrysalis Project, but he had already possessed the confidence and charisma of a born (or, in his case, manufactured) leader. Even after she and Gary Seven had shut down the Chrysalis Project, they had kept careful track of Khan and the other superkids, now scattered throughout the world.