Star Trek Into Darkness by Alan Dean Foster
Without bothering to say This one is, Kirk addressed the Science station. “Lock onto their positions. Beam them back aboard. Right now.”
Spock’s response came even faster than usual. “With his arm trapped inside it, the transporter is unable to differentiate between Dr. McCoy and the torpedo. We cannot beam one back without the other. Furthermore, there are additional concerns if using a transporter to beam a heavy weapon, which, of course, is why it was taken to the surface below by shuttlecraft in the first place. By the time I could get to the transporter room . . . ”
Kirk was sure Spock had detailed explanations for many other matters related to the present situation. Unfortunately, there was no time to listen to them. He addressed himself to the images visible on the forward screen.
“Dr. Marcus, can you reverse the action that just took place within the torpedo? Can you disarm it?”
“I—I’m trying!”
* * *
On the planetoid below, Carol Marcus’s fingers were flying over the monitor’s front panel—to no apparent effect. Individual sections continued to appear in red, as did the numbers that maintained their inexorable countdown.
Wincing in pain, McCoy prodded her through clenched teeth. “I can’t get my arm out!”
As a physician, he should have been analyzing the pain in his arm and speculating as to possible permanent damage. If they had a phaser between them, he would have considered having Carol cut off his arm so they could be beamed back to the ship. A missing limb he could deal with, later. He was healthy, and the prospects for full regeneration down to the neural level were acceptable. But, expecting no confrontation on the surface of the uninhabited planetoid, they had not brought any weapons with them. Except the torpedo, of course. In contrast, it might take as much as half a minute to amputate his arm with the use of a precision cutter. And, wonder of wonders, they had a precision cutter.
Unfortunately, McCoy was holding on to it with the hand that was trapped inside the torpedo.
Reaching a decision, Marcus abruptly moved to the side of the weapon. Using the same tool that she had employed to detach the first two outer panels, she began to remove the protective transparency that covered the torpedo’s main visible readout. As she worked she kept muttering to herself, “I can do this . . . I can do this.”
Watching her, McCoy came to a decision of his own.
Quietly, and without fanfare, he addressed his comm unit. “Jim, I’m . . . boned. No reason for both of us to be. Get her out of here. You can beam her back aboard without any problem.”
Overhearing, Marcus snapped a response in his direction even as she continued to work on the weapon’s innards. “No! You beam me back, he dies! I can do this, dammit! Trust me!”
* * *
“Standing by to transport Dr. Marcus on your command, sir.” Sulu was not as emotionless as Spock, but in doing his job he was trying his best not to influence his captain’s decision one way or the other.
* * *
Carol Marcus removed the outer panel and then the LCD readout within, exposing a mass of cabling and optical connections that now pulsed with intensity. Without hesitation, she began digging through them. As her arms interrupted the opticals, there were flashes of light and a few sparks. But she didn’t retreat or remove her probing fingers.
“Twenty seconds,” McCoy mumbled as he stared in horrified fascination at the remorseless readout. “Eighteen . . . ” Full awareness of what she was doing interrupted his morbid count. “Hey, what are you doing over there? I thought we weren’t supposed to touch anything?!”
“Like I’m going to make things worse by trying?” she responded. “Please be quiet.”
Four . . . three . . .
So many cables, so many connections, so many unknowns.
“Shit!”
Grabbing a double handful of cables, Marcus leaned back and yanked as hard as she could.
From somewhere deep within the bowels of the torpedo there came a puff of vapor, neither toxic nor explosive. The steady beeping that had emanated from the weapon’s depths since it had been armed gave way to a falling whine. The panel pinning McCoy’s arm retracted, releasing him. As he fell to the ground, he clutched at his freed arm—it was deeply bruised, but it was still attached to his shoulder and, as near as he could tell, fully functional. Gritting his teeth against the painful tingling sensation as full blood flow resumed to his hand, he flung the now-unneeded cutter aside. Nearby, a relieved Carol Marcus slumped onto the gravel, still clutching both handfuls of cable.
* * *
On the bridge Spock turned and reported, calm as ever. “Deactivation successful, Captain.”
Letting out a relieved breath, Kirk leaned forward and shut his eyes. Remembering McCoy’s distress, he then half straightened and addressed the comm. “Dr. McCoy, are you all right? Report. Bones?”
* * *
McCoy wasn’t listening, nor did Carol Marcus step in on the doctor’s behalf to acknowledge the captain’s query. Her action had done more than deactivate a supposed live warhead. It had also resulted in the protective paneling that shielded the special drive compartment opening, sliding backward, revealing . . .
McCoy stared downward. “Jim, you’re gonna want to see this. Spock is gonna want to see this.” He paused. “Everyone is going to want to see this, but I’m not sure everyone should. Not until we know more about what I’m looking at right now. A lot more.”
Located between the supposedly secret advanced new drive and the control compartment that had threatened to cut off McCoy’s arm, there was something else. A sizable additional compartment. What it contained wasn’t part of a drive system at all.
It was a human being—a man, to be exact. His skin was terribly pale. Which was not inappropriate, as he was as frozen solid as ice.
* * *
Though portions of the Enterprise’s sickbay were designed to, if need be, accommodate alien life-forms who bulked considerably larger than human, it still proved a difficult and awkward task to wrestle the disarmed torpedo all the way into one of the examination rooms. That was where Kirk and Spock found Carol Marcus hovering over the deactivated weapon, gazing down at the restful, pale-white face of the man lying within. His age was indeterminate. His physical age, Kirk reminded himself. There was no telling how long this man had lain in his present state. Seated on a nearby bed, McCoy acknowledged their arrival with a nod. Shirtless, he sat patiently while one of his nurses tended to his injured arm.
“What have you learned?” Kirk immediately asked Marcus.
“A little. Not nearly enough.” She indicated the torpedo and its unlikely, unreasonable, and utterly inexplicable contents. “It’s brilliant, actually. Somebody managed to shrink the drive unit to the point where they had room for an additional compartment and retrofitted the space that had been freed up to accommodate a cryogenic capsule. A portion of the onboard stored energy meant to maintain the weapon’s electronics and related systems was redirected to sustain the capsule’s functionality.” Marcus shook her head at the wonder of it all. “A capsule like this requires only minimal power to sustain cold stasis for a considerable period of time.”
Kirk’s gaze shifted from her to the figure in the torpedo. There was no movement, of course, not even a rising and falling of the chest or a flexing of the nostrils. The man lying within was not breathing. Which, given his current frozen state, was not conclusive of anything.
“Is he alive?”
Standing on the other side of the torpedo, McCoy spoke up. “Yeah, he’s alive. His vitals are minimal, barely detectable, but they’re there. Slowed waaayyy down. To levels you’d want if you chose to take a long nap on the floor of the Antarctic Ocean.”
Kirk pressed his chief physician. “Can he be revived?”
McCoy was plainly dubious. “Not without the proper equipment. You can’t improvise this sort of thing. The same science that was used to put him in this state has to be used to bring him out of it. If we try to bring him back without the
proper instrumentation, the attempt could kill him as soon as revive him. . . . This technology’s beyond me.”
“How advanced, Doctor?” an obviously intrigued Spock inquired.
“It’s not advanced,” Carol explained. “That cryotube is ancient.”
“We haven’t had to freeze anyone since the earliest days of deep space exploration,” McCoy added. “The discovery and development of warp capability made this particular branch of biotech obsolete. An instant antique. And speaking of antiques, that’s the most interesting thing about our friend here.” He winced as pain flared in his injured arm.
“I did a quick scraping off his right shoulder. Less than a flea would take, nothing he’d notice even if he was awake. But enough to run some tests.” McCoy nodded at the torpedo and its frozen occupant. “He’s three hundred years old.”
Kirk exchanged a meaningful glance with his science officer. Though neither man spoke a word, their thoughts were aligned.
* * *
The two armed security officers on duty at the entrance to the brig had to move swiftly to open it. As fast as Kirk was moving and as angry as he was, he might have gone right through the door. He wasted no time confronting the room’s single prisoner.
“Who are you? Why is there a man in the torpedo we examined?”
Gazing back through the barrier at the intent Kirk, the prisoner sighed tiredly.
“There are men and women in all the torpedoes, Captain. And I put them there.”
Once again captain and first officer exchanged looks. Kirk repeated himself.
“Who the hell are you?”
It was a question the prisoner had been asked too many times before; one which he had been forced to answer far more often than he wished. But no one had asked him in some time, he reminded himself. So despite how much it bored him to do so yet again, he deigned to explain himself.
“I am a remnant of a time long past. Genetically engineered to be superior so as to lead others to peace in a world at war.” He looked away. “But I and my companions were condemned as criminals. Forced into exile. For centuries we slept, hoping that when we awoke, things would be . . . different. Always these vain hopes.”
Spock interrupted. “You imply that you too were in cryostasis?”
The prisoner gifted Spock with a nod of approval and smiled at Kirk. “He’s smart.” Looking away from the captain, Harrison turned his attention to the science officer. “If your planet had not been annihilated, I would still be asleep. But as a result of the destruction of Vulcan, your Starfleet began to search distant quadrants of space more aggressively than before. They found my ship adrift. I alone was revived, after which I was able to learn about the destruction of Vulcan and . . . many other things.”
Kirk listened to it all, the look on his face indicating that everything he was hearing might very well be the elaborate invention of a disturbed mind. Or a sheer fabrication being dispensed by a clear mind. Either way . . .
“I looked up John Harrison,” Kirk told him. “Up until a year ago, he didn’t exist.”
It was the prisoner’s turn to move close to the barrier. All that separated the two men now was a laminated layer of malleable corundum-silicate glass.
“ ‘John Harrison’ was a fiction created the moment I was awoken by your Admiral Marcus to help him advance his cause. A smoke screen, a nonexistent reality, an imagined self, all concocted to conceal my true identity. Because it would not have gone well for your admiral had my true name become known at the time of my revival. Some curious ensign might have decided, in a moment of boredom, to run a search on it. Then everything might have become . . . difficult.” He paused, smiled, and went silent.
For a long moment, it was as if he were no longer present. As if his thoughts, if not his physical self, were focused on a time, place, and events long ago and far away. An impatient Kirk was about to comment anew when the prisoner finally came back to where he was, and to himself. He moved to stand directly opposite Kirk on the other side of the glass. For a long moment they regarded one another silently: captor and prisoner. Finally the man in the brig spoke once more.
“My name is . . . Khan.”
“I’ll accept that much as truth,” Kirk replied carefully. “For now. Pardon my cynicism, but why would a Starfleet admiral need a three-hundred-year-old frozen man to help him do anything?”
The individual who had until now called himself Harrison gave an indifferent shrug. “Because I am . . . better. Better for your admiral’s purpose than anything—than anyone—else.”
“Better?” Kirk’s expression contorted. “Better at what?”
“Everything.” This was spoken not as a boast, but as a matter of fact by one who knew it to be so. “Alexander Marcus believed he needed to respond to an uncivilized threat in a civilized time, and for that, he needed someone less civilized. He needed a warrior’s mind. A mind dedicated to combat, to winning, to surviving at all costs. He needed my mind. He needed . . . me.”
The prisoner’s story found Mister Spock at least as unconvinced as Kirk. “You are suggesting that the admiral violated every regulation he vowed to uphold simply because he wanted to exploit your intellect?”
Khan was not offended by the Vulcan’s skepticism. After all, his was a truly remarkable tale. When presented to others, incredulity was to be expected. He could only hope to counter disbelief with truth. Whether others accepted it or not meant nothing in the end. The truth would remain in spite of their doubt.
“He wanted to exploit my savagery. Intellect alone is useless in a fight, Mr. Spock. As a Vulcan, you should know that.”
Spock’s expression did not change, but only Khan noticed the slight tensing of the science officer’s hands. “I was well trained in the military arts, and I assure you that should the need arise, I am fully capable of handling myself in matters of physical combat—as was only recently the case.”
“Mr. Spock, I’m not talking about training. I’m not talking about the application of learned skills. I’m certain if it came out of a book, that you’re an expert on every chapter. I’m sure that if there is an accepted procedure for countering a blow, for firing a weapon, for maneuvering against an enemy in space, that you can both quote and direct every one of them to perfection.” His tone darkened slightly. “I’m talking about what humans generally refer to as ‘gut reaction.’ Fighting without thinking. Battle in the absence of any procedure or rules. If you can’t break a rule, how can you be expected to break bone?”
The science officer did not reply. It was evident their prisoner was, however mildly and in his own peculiar fashion, enjoying taunting him. It appeared that Spock would not give him the satisfaction of participating in such a meaningless exchange.
But his hands tightened just a little more.
Tiring of a game in which only he knew all the rules, Khan turned back to Kirk. “Your admiral used me to help design new weapons. To realize his vision of a heavily militarized Starfleet. That was the purpose of his precious, private Section 31. Starfleet was content to let him supervise one small, unimportant research project: After all, was he not an admiral of the fleet? Some minor improvements, some small advances, he allowed to be passed up along the research chain to show that his project was making progress and that it was deserving of continued funding. Other advances, particularly those in whose development I personally participated, he continued to shroud in ‘necessary’ secrecy until they were sufficiently ‘perfected’ for them to be revealed to Starfleet at large.
“And then? He sent you to use those weapons. To fire my torpedoes at an unsuspecting world. He purposefully saw to it that your ship would become crippled in enemy space, leading to one inevitable outcome.”
He had their full attention now, he saw. It was all so easy.
“The Klingons would come searching for whoever was responsible for the intrusion and assault on their homeworld, and you would have no chance of escape. You would have no choice but to fight back. The Klingon E
mpire, quite reasonably, would be outraged. Marcus would finally have the war he talked about—the war he always said he wanted—all because of a renegade captain engaged in an unsanctioned mission of personal vengeance. Think now a moment, Captain: Where did your orders come from to sally forth to kill me? Directly from Marcus. Did you ever receive any complementary orders from anywhere else or anyone else in Starfleet? No. It was all Marcus, it was just Marcus, it was only Marcus. You were, you are, not engaged in a mission on behalf of Starfleet. You are engaged in a mission on behalf of Admiral Alexander Marcus.” He paused a moment to let it all sink in.
“You are a pawn, Kirk. Advanced across the board to be sacrificed for the aims of your king.”
The captain met Khan’s gaze and did not waver. “No . . . no. Whether true or not, none of that changes the known fact that I watched you open fire on a room full of unarmed Starfleet officers and support personnel. You killed them in cold blood.”
For the first time, Khan allowed a crack to appear in his hitherto-unvarying visage. A hint of pain, or perhaps a suggestion of loss, finally drove him to raise his voice.
“Marcus took my crew from me. While I alone was revived, they were kept in frozen stasis. My pleas to similarly revive them fell on deaf ears. Ears that were numb to my need, to my pain. Help design new weapons, I was told, and eventually your crew will be restored to you. ‘Eventually.’ ” The laugh that escaped his lips was short and bitter. “ ‘Eventually’ came and went, with no indication that even one of my crew would be revived. No matter how much I pleaded, no matter that I went down on my knees and begged, ‘eventually’ always kept receding into the future. It was plain that in the mind of Alexander Marcus, ‘eventually’ actually meant ‘never.’ ”
“You,” Kirk countered sharply, “are a murderer!”
Racked with growing rage and emotion, Khan pretended not to hear him. “He used my own friends to control me. Realizing that he meant to keep me his vassal until I died, I tried to smuggle out my crew to safety by concealing them in the very weapons that I designed. But I was discovered. At that point, I knew Marcus would no longer risk my being alive, lest others in Starfleet discover what he had done. In attempting to save my crew, I had made myself more of a threat than a help. For my friends, as well as for myself, I had no choice but to escape—alone.
Spock’s response came even faster than usual. “With his arm trapped inside it, the transporter is unable to differentiate between Dr. McCoy and the torpedo. We cannot beam one back without the other. Furthermore, there are additional concerns if using a transporter to beam a heavy weapon, which, of course, is why it was taken to the surface below by shuttlecraft in the first place. By the time I could get to the transporter room . . . ”
Kirk was sure Spock had detailed explanations for many other matters related to the present situation. Unfortunately, there was no time to listen to them. He addressed himself to the images visible on the forward screen.
“Dr. Marcus, can you reverse the action that just took place within the torpedo? Can you disarm it?”
“I—I’m trying!”
* * *
On the planetoid below, Carol Marcus’s fingers were flying over the monitor’s front panel—to no apparent effect. Individual sections continued to appear in red, as did the numbers that maintained their inexorable countdown.
Wincing in pain, McCoy prodded her through clenched teeth. “I can’t get my arm out!”
As a physician, he should have been analyzing the pain in his arm and speculating as to possible permanent damage. If they had a phaser between them, he would have considered having Carol cut off his arm so they could be beamed back to the ship. A missing limb he could deal with, later. He was healthy, and the prospects for full regeneration down to the neural level were acceptable. But, expecting no confrontation on the surface of the uninhabited planetoid, they had not brought any weapons with them. Except the torpedo, of course. In contrast, it might take as much as half a minute to amputate his arm with the use of a precision cutter. And, wonder of wonders, they had a precision cutter.
Unfortunately, McCoy was holding on to it with the hand that was trapped inside the torpedo.
Reaching a decision, Marcus abruptly moved to the side of the weapon. Using the same tool that she had employed to detach the first two outer panels, she began to remove the protective transparency that covered the torpedo’s main visible readout. As she worked she kept muttering to herself, “I can do this . . . I can do this.”
Watching her, McCoy came to a decision of his own.
Quietly, and without fanfare, he addressed his comm unit. “Jim, I’m . . . boned. No reason for both of us to be. Get her out of here. You can beam her back aboard without any problem.”
Overhearing, Marcus snapped a response in his direction even as she continued to work on the weapon’s innards. “No! You beam me back, he dies! I can do this, dammit! Trust me!”
* * *
“Standing by to transport Dr. Marcus on your command, sir.” Sulu was not as emotionless as Spock, but in doing his job he was trying his best not to influence his captain’s decision one way or the other.
* * *
Carol Marcus removed the outer panel and then the LCD readout within, exposing a mass of cabling and optical connections that now pulsed with intensity. Without hesitation, she began digging through them. As her arms interrupted the opticals, there were flashes of light and a few sparks. But she didn’t retreat or remove her probing fingers.
“Twenty seconds,” McCoy mumbled as he stared in horrified fascination at the remorseless readout. “Eighteen . . . ” Full awareness of what she was doing interrupted his morbid count. “Hey, what are you doing over there? I thought we weren’t supposed to touch anything?!”
“Like I’m going to make things worse by trying?” she responded. “Please be quiet.”
Four . . . three . . .
So many cables, so many connections, so many unknowns.
“Shit!”
Grabbing a double handful of cables, Marcus leaned back and yanked as hard as she could.
From somewhere deep within the bowels of the torpedo there came a puff of vapor, neither toxic nor explosive. The steady beeping that had emanated from the weapon’s depths since it had been armed gave way to a falling whine. The panel pinning McCoy’s arm retracted, releasing him. As he fell to the ground, he clutched at his freed arm—it was deeply bruised, but it was still attached to his shoulder and, as near as he could tell, fully functional. Gritting his teeth against the painful tingling sensation as full blood flow resumed to his hand, he flung the now-unneeded cutter aside. Nearby, a relieved Carol Marcus slumped onto the gravel, still clutching both handfuls of cable.
* * *
On the bridge Spock turned and reported, calm as ever. “Deactivation successful, Captain.”
Letting out a relieved breath, Kirk leaned forward and shut his eyes. Remembering McCoy’s distress, he then half straightened and addressed the comm. “Dr. McCoy, are you all right? Report. Bones?”
* * *
McCoy wasn’t listening, nor did Carol Marcus step in on the doctor’s behalf to acknowledge the captain’s query. Her action had done more than deactivate a supposed live warhead. It had also resulted in the protective paneling that shielded the special drive compartment opening, sliding backward, revealing . . .
McCoy stared downward. “Jim, you’re gonna want to see this. Spock is gonna want to see this.” He paused. “Everyone is going to want to see this, but I’m not sure everyone should. Not until we know more about what I’m looking at right now. A lot more.”
Located between the supposedly secret advanced new drive and the control compartment that had threatened to cut off McCoy’s arm, there was something else. A sizable additional compartment. What it contained wasn’t part of a drive system at all.
It was a human being—a man, to be exact. His skin was terribly pale. Which was not inappropriate, as he was as frozen solid as ice.
* * *
Though portions of the Enterprise’s sickbay were designed to, if need be, accommodate alien life-forms who bulked considerably larger than human, it still proved a difficult and awkward task to wrestle the disarmed torpedo all the way into one of the examination rooms. That was where Kirk and Spock found Carol Marcus hovering over the deactivated weapon, gazing down at the restful, pale-white face of the man lying within. His age was indeterminate. His physical age, Kirk reminded himself. There was no telling how long this man had lain in his present state. Seated on a nearby bed, McCoy acknowledged their arrival with a nod. Shirtless, he sat patiently while one of his nurses tended to his injured arm.
“What have you learned?” Kirk immediately asked Marcus.
“A little. Not nearly enough.” She indicated the torpedo and its unlikely, unreasonable, and utterly inexplicable contents. “It’s brilliant, actually. Somebody managed to shrink the drive unit to the point where they had room for an additional compartment and retrofitted the space that had been freed up to accommodate a cryogenic capsule. A portion of the onboard stored energy meant to maintain the weapon’s electronics and related systems was redirected to sustain the capsule’s functionality.” Marcus shook her head at the wonder of it all. “A capsule like this requires only minimal power to sustain cold stasis for a considerable period of time.”
Kirk’s gaze shifted from her to the figure in the torpedo. There was no movement, of course, not even a rising and falling of the chest or a flexing of the nostrils. The man lying within was not breathing. Which, given his current frozen state, was not conclusive of anything.
“Is he alive?”
Standing on the other side of the torpedo, McCoy spoke up. “Yeah, he’s alive. His vitals are minimal, barely detectable, but they’re there. Slowed waaayyy down. To levels you’d want if you chose to take a long nap on the floor of the Antarctic Ocean.”
Kirk pressed his chief physician. “Can he be revived?”
McCoy was plainly dubious. “Not without the proper equipment. You can’t improvise this sort of thing. The same science that was used to put him in this state has to be used to bring him out of it. If we try to bring him back without the
“How advanced, Doctor?” an obviously intrigued Spock inquired.
“It’s not advanced,” Carol explained. “That cryotube is ancient.”
“We haven’t had to freeze anyone since the earliest days of deep space exploration,” McCoy added. “The discovery and development of warp capability made this particular branch of biotech obsolete. An instant antique. And speaking of antiques, that’s the most interesting thing about our friend here.” He winced as pain flared in his injured arm.
“I did a quick scraping off his right shoulder. Less than a flea would take, nothing he’d notice even if he was awake. But enough to run some tests.” McCoy nodded at the torpedo and its frozen occupant. “He’s three hundred years old.”
Kirk exchanged a meaningful glance with his science officer. Though neither man spoke a word, their thoughts were aligned.
* * *
The two armed security officers on duty at the entrance to the brig had to move swiftly to open it. As fast as Kirk was moving and as angry as he was, he might have gone right through the door. He wasted no time confronting the room’s single prisoner.
“Who are you? Why is there a man in the torpedo we examined?”
Gazing back through the barrier at the intent Kirk, the prisoner sighed tiredly.
“There are men and women in all the torpedoes, Captain. And I put them there.”
Once again captain and first officer exchanged looks. Kirk repeated himself.
“Who the hell are you?”
It was a question the prisoner had been asked too many times before; one which he had been forced to answer far more often than he wished. But no one had asked him in some time, he reminded himself. So despite how much it bored him to do so yet again, he deigned to explain himself.
“I am a remnant of a time long past. Genetically engineered to be superior so as to lead others to peace in a world at war.” He looked away. “But I and my companions were condemned as criminals. Forced into exile. For centuries we slept, hoping that when we awoke, things would be . . . different. Always these vain hopes.”
Spock interrupted. “You imply that you too were in cryostasis?”
The prisoner gifted Spock with a nod of approval and smiled at Kirk. “He’s smart.” Looking away from the captain, Harrison turned his attention to the science officer. “If your planet had not been annihilated, I would still be asleep. But as a result of the destruction of Vulcan, your Starfleet began to search distant quadrants of space more aggressively than before. They found my ship adrift. I alone was revived, after which I was able to learn about the destruction of Vulcan and . . . many other things.”
Kirk listened to it all, the look on his face indicating that everything he was hearing might very well be the elaborate invention of a disturbed mind. Or a sheer fabrication being dispensed by a clear mind. Either way . . .
“I looked up John Harrison,” Kirk told him. “Up until a year ago, he didn’t exist.”
It was the prisoner’s turn to move close to the barrier. All that separated the two men now was a laminated layer of malleable corundum-silicate glass.
“ ‘John Harrison’ was a fiction created the moment I was awoken by your Admiral Marcus to help him advance his cause. A smoke screen, a nonexistent reality, an imagined self, all concocted to conceal my true identity. Because it would not have gone well for your admiral had my true name become known at the time of my revival. Some curious ensign might have decided, in a moment of boredom, to run a search on it. Then everything might have become . . . difficult.” He paused, smiled, and went silent.
For a long moment, it was as if he were no longer present. As if his thoughts, if not his physical self, were focused on a time, place, and events long ago and far away. An impatient Kirk was about to comment anew when the prisoner finally came back to where he was, and to himself. He moved to stand directly opposite Kirk on the other side of the glass. For a long moment they regarded one another silently: captor and prisoner. Finally the man in the brig spoke once more.
“My name is . . . Khan.”
“I’ll accept that much as truth,” Kirk replied carefully. “For now. Pardon my cynicism, but why would a Starfleet admiral need a three-hundred-year-old frozen man to help him do anything?”
The individual who had until now called himself Harrison gave an indifferent shrug. “Because I am . . . better. Better for your admiral’s purpose than anything—than anyone—else.”
“Better?” Kirk’s expression contorted. “Better at what?”
“Everything.” This was spoken not as a boast, but as a matter of fact by one who knew it to be so. “Alexander Marcus believed he needed to respond to an uncivilized threat in a civilized time, and for that, he needed someone less civilized. He needed a warrior’s mind. A mind dedicated to combat, to winning, to surviving at all costs. He needed my mind. He needed . . . me.”
The prisoner’s story found Mister Spock at least as unconvinced as Kirk. “You are suggesting that the admiral violated every regulation he vowed to uphold simply because he wanted to exploit your intellect?”
Khan was not offended by the Vulcan’s skepticism. After all, his was a truly remarkable tale. When presented to others, incredulity was to be expected. He could only hope to counter disbelief with truth. Whether others accepted it or not meant nothing in the end. The truth would remain in spite of their doubt.
“He wanted to exploit my savagery. Intellect alone is useless in a fight, Mr. Spock. As a Vulcan, you should know that.”
Spock’s expression did not change, but only Khan noticed the slight tensing of the science officer’s hands. “I was well trained in the military arts, and I assure you that should the need arise, I am fully capable of handling myself in matters of physical combat—as was only recently the case.”
“Mr. Spock, I’m not talking about training. I’m not talking about the application of learned skills. I’m certain if it came out of a book, that you’re an expert on every chapter. I’m sure that if there is an accepted procedure for countering a blow, for firing a weapon, for maneuvering against an enemy in space, that you can both quote and direct every one of them to perfection.” His tone darkened slightly. “I’m talking about what humans generally refer to as ‘gut reaction.’ Fighting without thinking. Battle in the absence of any procedure or rules. If you can’t break a rule, how can you be expected to break bone?”
The science officer did not reply. It was evident their prisoner was, however mildly and in his own peculiar fashion, enjoying taunting him. It appeared that Spock would not give him the satisfaction of participating in such a meaningless exchange.
But his hands tightened just a little more.
Tiring of a game in which only he knew all the rules, Khan turned back to Kirk. “Your admiral used me to help design new weapons. To realize his vision of a heavily militarized Starfleet. That was the purpose of his precious, private Section 31. Starfleet was content to let him supervise one small, unimportant research project: After all, was he not an admiral of the fleet? Some minor improvements, some small advances, he allowed to be passed up along the research chain to show that his project was making progress and that it was deserving of continued funding. Other advances, particularly those in whose development I personally participated, he continued to shroud in ‘necessary’ secrecy until they were sufficiently ‘perfected’ for them to be revealed to Starfleet at large.
“And then? He sent you to use those weapons. To fire my torpedoes at an unsuspecting world. He purposefully saw to it that your ship would become crippled in enemy space, leading to one inevitable outcome.”
He had their full attention now, he saw. It was all so easy.
“The Klingons would come searching for whoever was responsible for the intrusion and assault on their homeworld, and you would have no chance of escape. You would have no choice but to fight back. The Klingon E
“You are a pawn, Kirk. Advanced across the board to be sacrificed for the aims of your king.”
The captain met Khan’s gaze and did not waver. “No . . . no. Whether true or not, none of that changes the known fact that I watched you open fire on a room full of unarmed Starfleet officers and support personnel. You killed them in cold blood.”
For the first time, Khan allowed a crack to appear in his hitherto-unvarying visage. A hint of pain, or perhaps a suggestion of loss, finally drove him to raise his voice.
“Marcus took my crew from me. While I alone was revived, they were kept in frozen stasis. My pleas to similarly revive them fell on deaf ears. Ears that were numb to my need, to my pain. Help design new weapons, I was told, and eventually your crew will be restored to you. ‘Eventually.’ ” The laugh that escaped his lips was short and bitter. “ ‘Eventually’ came and went, with no indication that even one of my crew would be revived. No matter how much I pleaded, no matter that I went down on my knees and begged, ‘eventually’ always kept receding into the future. It was plain that in the mind of Alexander Marcus, ‘eventually’ actually meant ‘never.’ ”
“You,” Kirk countered sharply, “are a murderer!”
Racked with growing rage and emotion, Khan pretended not to hear him. “He used my own friends to control me. Realizing that he meant to keep me his vassal until I died, I tried to smuggle out my crew to safety by concealing them in the very weapons that I designed. But I was discovered. At that point, I knew Marcus would no longer risk my being alive, lest others in Starfleet discover what he had done. In attempting to save my crew, I had made myself more of a threat than a help. For my friends, as well as for myself, I had no choice but to escape—alone.