STAR TREK - TOS (14 page)

The militia leader’s own bodyguard, a broad-shouldered American bruiser with a crew cut and icy blue eyes, countered by drawing his own gun. All around the table, armed escorts tensed for action, but Morrison did not back down. “Call off your mangy attack dog!” he challenged Gomez, leaning forward with both hands splayed upon the table. “How about you and me take this outside?”

“Typical,” Chen Tiejun scoffed in disgust. Her own bodyguard was an amazonian redhead whom Khan suspected was also a product of Chrysalis. “Chest-beating and pissing contests. Classic masculine behavior, reeking of testosterone and gender tyranny.” She looked down her classically perfect nose at the quarreling supermen. “Why don’t you just compare the caliber of your firearms and get it over with?”

Khan thought he heard Ament snicker quietly behind him.

“Enough of this petty bickering,” he declared, determined to restore order to the summit. Pulling out his chair, he made a point of sitting down at the table in a civilized manner. “We should be above politics and personality conflicts; it is manifestly obvious that we are stronger together than divided.” He spoke from the heart, hoping to win over the others through the[116]strength and passion of his convictions. “Let us not waste this historic opportunity by pitting our remarkable talents and intellects against each other.”

Amin remained unmoved. “Ideology is for fools and weaklings,” he stated bluntly. “Only power matters.” A glass of ice water sat before him on the table. He handed the glass to his bodyguard, who tested it by taking a sip before giving it back to Amin. “What can you offer me?”

Although the warlord’s self-centered attitude irked him, Khan welcomed the opportunity to extol the resources at his command. “Besides a secure power base, and a network of loyal operatives throughout Asia and beyond, I have access to military technology, both offensive and defensive, that exceeds anything else on Earth, including the U.S. Pentagon’s newest and most closely guarded toys.”

For now, Khan chose only to hint at the formidable arsenal at his command. “Space-based weaponry.

Protective force fields. An elite force of genetically engineered warriors and assassins. All this and more I promise you, if you will but swear fealty to me and the noble crusade that I embody.”

“Whoa there, Kublai Khan!” Morrison objected, with flagrant disrespect. Glowering at Gomez, the American dropped back into his seat and peered at Khan over the top of his sunglasses. “Not so fast.

I’m not above a good, old-fashioned horse trade, exchanging tech for intel and vice versa, but I’m sure as hell not going to be part of any internationalist conspiracy to compromise the God-given sovereignty of the United States, not to mention free men and patriots everywhere.” He shook a tobacco-stained finger at Khan. “I[117]haven’t raised a militia to fight the federal Beast in D.C. just to hand America over to a foreign prince.”

“Free men, you say?” Chen Tiejun drew herself up indignantly. “And what of free women, who are forever oppressed regardless of politics and philosophies?” She symbolically wiped her hands of the whole discussion. “I want no part of any alliance that simply perpetuates the male-centered power structures of the past.”

“Then stay on your island, witch,” Amin jeered, “and leave the rest of the planet to us.” Draining the last of his water, he loudly deposited the glass back onto the table. “I will swear loyalty to no one, Khan Noonien Singh, no matter what technological bribes you offer. I must be dealt with as an equal, or not at all!”

“Ditto!” Morrison exclaimed. He tipped back in his chair and surveyed the ornamented walls of the bunker with an obnoxiously unimpressed air. “Since when does one backward corner of India call the shots in world affairs?” He snorted in derision. “If I won’t be bullied by Janet Reno and her storm troopers, let alone the goddamn United Nations, I’m sure as heck not going to take my marching orders from some puffed-up maharajah!”

It required all Khan’s superhuman self-control not to smite the insolent American on the spot. Instead he watched and listened in dismay as the meeting degenerated into a babel of bellicose voices shouting to be heard over each other. Old accusations and insults echoed within the bunker as those whom he hoped would be the vanguard of his brave new world instead refought the outworn battles of the past century.

Finally, he could endure it no more. “Silence! Hold[118]your tongues, all of you!” His fist slammed down upon the teak tabletop with such force that it cracked the sturdy wood, the sharp report momentarily quelling the rancorous hubbub. “Are you all blind?” he raged at the squabbling leaders.

“Have you lost your superior vision and mentalities?” He felt like throttling the lot of them with his bare hands. “Is it not obvious that we must speak with one voice, one mind?”

“Not if that voice is yours, Khan,” Hunyadi said coldly. He rose from his seat, then headed for the exit.

“I have wasted enough time here. Eastern Europe will chart its own course, unswayed by outside interference.”

“As will Africa,” Amin proclaimed, shoving away from the table. “Stay off my continent, Sikh, and I may let you keep your paltry kingdom in turn.”

“This tiny spinning globe scarcely matters in the cosmic scheme,” Arcturus said airily. His chartreuse robes rustled softly as he made his way toward the door. “I must prepare my flock for their new life among the stars.”

And so it went. One by one, accompanied by their watchful bodyguards, the preeminent progeny of the Chrysalis Project exited the bunker, barely deigning to acknowledge each other as they departed, leaving Khan and his retinue alone in the spacious underground chamber. “Leave me,” he instructed Joaquin and Ament, desiring solitude in which to contemplate the wreckage of his vision of unity.

Bitterness ate away at his hopes and ideals. The summit could not have gone worse, he concluded with mordant, mirthless humor, if Gary Seven had[119]dictated the agenda.
What now am I to do?
he pondered, his heroic spirit struggling against despair.

The golden scimitar on the table mocked him with its own illustrious history. Saladin the Great had united the Arab world and led them to victory over the Crusaders. Yet he, Khan, could not even bring together his own kind, designed and conceived in the very same laboratories.
It is as the Old Testament said,
he thought: “A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city; and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.”

Khan felt those metaphorical bars closing in on his dreams. He snatched up the scimitar and hurled it across the bunker, the centuries-old blade striking the farthest wall so hard that it sank deeply into the hardened granite and remained hanging there, embedded like Excalibur in its stone. How dare his supposed peers turn their backs on his long-ordained destiny? How dare they deny the world the balm of his superior leadership?

“Very well,” he resolved, clenching his fist before him. He would not permit the base and venal failings of his treacherous kinsmen to subvert the monumental task to which he had been born. The Great Khanate would extend its blessings over all the peoples of the world, even if it meant doing battle against legions of his own kind.

“Let there be war.”

While Captain Kirk and the landing party remain on the planet’s surface, dealing with the crisis at the Paragon Colony, we are continuing to monitor the Klingon battle cruiser now orbiting Sycorax. Given the potential threat posed by the Klingon vessel, the Enterprise remains on Yellow Alert. ...

“MR. SPOCK!” Ensign Chekov exclaimed from Spock’s own science station. The scanner cast a blue light onto the young Russian’s startled features. “The Klingon ship is targeting the colony!”

Seated in the captain’s chair, Spock swiftly processed the ensign’s report and reacted accordingly. “Mr.

Sulu,” he ordered the ship’s helmsman. “An intercept course, with all deliberate speed.”

“Yes, sir!” Sulu responded immediately. The image on the viewscreen—the Klingon ship viewed from a prudent distance—tilted as the
Enterprise
zoomed to[121]place itself between the Klingon vessel and the endangered colony.

Spock activated the intercom on the starboard arm of the command chair. “All decks, Condition Red,”

he stated matter-of-factly. His stoic Vulcan features betrayed no trace of anxiety. “Battle stations.”

Alert indicators flashed crimson at key locations around the bridge as they closed on the Klingon vessel, which grew steadily larger on the viewscreen. The D-7 battle cruiser resembled a cross between an old-fashioned submarine and a Romulan bird-of-prey, with its bulbous prow connected to its rear engineering section by a long, tapering neck. A pair of massive wings spread outward from the engineering hull, supporting matching warp nacelles and disruptor cannons.

Spock rapidly considered the situation. The Klingons’ hostile actions were not entirely unanticipated; in Spock’s experience, Klingons seldom retreated without a fight. The only question was how far Captain Koloth was willing to go in his efforts to strike out at the Paragon Colony. In the past, Koloth had struck Spock as unusually cool-headed for a Klingon, albeit characteristically unscrupulous. Spock hoped that the Klingon commander would choose to forgo a full military confrontation with the
Enterprise,
but acknowledged that the probability of such an outcome was somewhat less than 6.463 percent.

“Lt. Uhura,” he addressed the ship’s able communications officer. “Hail the Klingon vessel.”

The bridge of the
Imperial Klingon Ship Gr’oth
was musky with the scent of impending battle. Koloth

[122]leaned forward in his command seat as he contemplated the ugly yellow planet on the main viewer.

Crimson lights cast bloody shadows upon the bridge, whose recessed forward area belonged to the captain alone; the bulk of his bridge crew performed their duties on a raised platform behind the command seat. Tactical displays and monitors surrounded the hexagonal viewscreen.

Koloth stroked his goatee thoughtfully. It was regrettable that he would have to destroy the colony below, and all that valuable genetic expertise, but he could not risk letting Paragon’s scientific secrets fall into the hands of the Empire’s enemies. “Prepare to fire,” he ordered curtly. Set at maximum power, the battle cruiser’s powerful phase disruptor cannons would make short work of the colony’s protective dome.

“Captain!” Lt. K’rad shouted from the auxiliary tactical station, where he had been assigned to keep watch over the
Enterprise.
The silver mesh on his uniformreflected the crimson glow of the bridge lights.

“The Earthers’ ship is moving to block our cannons!”

Koloth scowled. Captain Kirk and his crew were not making his mission any easier. He had hoped that the photon grenade his first officer, Korax, had planted at Paragon’s primary deflector array would be enough to terminate the colony’s existence, but sensors indicated that Kirk and the colonists had somehow managed to keep the dome intact despite the sabotage. Now here was the
Enterprise,
complicating matters once again.

“Shall I reposition the ship?” the helmsman, Kinya, asked.

Koloth shook his head. The
Enterprise
would no[123]doubt simply shift position as well, and Koloth had no desire to spend the rest of his career playing a never-ending game of feint and parry with the Starfleet vessel.
We could be stuck above this wretched planet until Kahless comes back,
he mused sourly.

“We should blow them to atoms,” Korax snarled. Koloth’s first officer stood, as was proper, at his captain’s side. A black eye and a split lip bore testament to Korax’s earlier encounter with Paragon’s genetically enhanced security guards. “Obliterate
Enterprise,
then those gene-twisting freaks on the planet!”

“All in good time,” Koloth counseled, cautiously regarding the
Constitution
-class starship obstructing his view of the planet. He had not risen to his present high command by taking unnecessary risks. A pity, he reflected, that the
Gr’oth
lacked a cloaking device of the sort recently developed by the Romulans; such foolproof camouflage would have allowed him to break this stalemate by striking out at the colony before the
Enterprise
could get in the way.
We must exert more pressure on our so-called allies to
share their cloaking technology with the Empire.

“Captain!” The communications chief, Vlare, called out from his station behind and above the command chair. “The humans are hailing us.”

Of course they are,Koloth thought.
Humans would always rather talk than fight.
“Onscreen,” he ordered.

The face of Kirk’s Vulcan first officer appeared on the main viewer, confirming Koloth’s assumption that Captain Kirk was still on the planet’s surface.
“This is First Officer Spock,”
he stated, with an irritating lack of inflection,
“currently in command of the
U.S.S. Enterprise.
We have observed your attempt to
target the human
[124]
colony on Sycorax and urge you strongly to reconsider. We are prepared to
defend the colony if necessary.”

“This is no affair of yours, Vulcan,” Koloth retorted. “The Paragon Colony is not yet a member of the Federation and therefore beyond your jurisdiction. We have every right to take action against a legitimate threat to Klingon security.” He smirked at the viewscreen. “For that matter, the colony violates the Federation’s own ridiculously stringent prohibitions against human genetic engineering. You should thank us for striving to enforce your laws so forcefully!”

Spock raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“Your sarcasm is duly noted, Captain,”
he said dryly.

“Nonetheless, the colony remains under our protection until its future political affiliation can be
determined. I suggest you return to your own recognized region of space, which does not, at
present, include the planet Sycorax.”

“He’s bluffing!” Korax insisted. Sneering, he spit contemptuously upon the grilled metal floor of the bridge. “Vulcans have no will for battle.”