STAR TREK - TOS (21 page)

“No, sir,” the OOD reported. He was a burly, tattooed sailor from Marseille, who had resigned from the French navy to protest the 1985 bombing of a Greenpeace vessel, the
Rainbow Warrior,
by French intelligence agents. A name badge on his lapel[183]identified him as Lt. Guillaume Cassel. “The mines are blocking the choke point.”

Hapka stroked his beard as he considered his options. Silver crescents glittered on his collar, while his breast pocket bore an impressive collection of polished medals and decorations. Although not a product of genetic engineering, the captain had already achieved a distinguished reputation as a submariner before joining Khan’s private navy, having served with distinction in the Falklands war. That was many years ago, and Hapka’s rust-colored whiskers were now streaked with silver, yet Khan knew he was fortunate to have such an experienced seaman in command of his flagship.

“Well, we’ve come too far to turn back now.” The captain did not let the threat of mines deter him.

“Initiate a phased-energy sweep. Full-strength. Ninety degree dispersal.” He turned toward Khan, as the OOD verbally passed along the captain’s orders to the weapons officer in charge of the
Kaur’s
forward lasers. “It seems, Your Excellency,” Hapka told Khan coolly, “that we have been given the opportunity to see how your new laser system works in the field.”

“I have great faith in both the technology and your crew, Captain,” Khan replied confidently. Originally trained as an engineer, he had personally devised the sub’s unique defense system, which employed a bank of high-intensity, phased-energy lasers to sweep the sea in front of the
Kaur
clear of any physical obstacles, man-made or otherwise. The system had performed magnificently in staged trials off the coast of Bombay, but had yet to be tested in actual combat. “May we observe the operation more closely?”

[184]“Of course, sir.” Hapka nimbly led Khan down a short flight of metal steps to the ground floor of the control room. Turning sideways, they squeezed past the various crewmen at their posts until they stood right behind the junior officer seated in front of the laser controls. If the weapons officer, a young Filipino woman, was troubled by her superiors’ scrutiny, she concealed her nerves admirably, keeping her gaze fixed intently on a mounted display screen as she manipulated a series of knobs and switches by hand. “Any contacts, Lieutenant Bataeo?”

“Not yet, sir,” the youthful sailor reported crisply. Her jet-black hair had been closely cropped.

“Commencing second sweep now.”

A bright white line swept back and forth across the faint green glow of the screen, like a windshield wiper working diligently to clear away spattered raindrops. Khan had little trouble visualizing the reality represented by the display; in his mind’s eye, he saw an incandescent sapphire beam cutting through the Stygian darkness outside the ship, carving out a swath of safety many meters ahead of the
Kaur’s
rounded prow.
Like a flaming sword,
he thought proudly,
blazing brightly beneath the sea.

“There!” Bataeo blurted, pointing at the screen where a circular blip briefly flared along the length of the sweeping phosphorescent line. A low-pitched electronic beep accompanied the blip. “Contact!”

A heartbeat later, a shock wave rocked the control room, forcing Khan to grab on to the handle of an overhead chart cabinet to steady himself. A mine, he understood at once, detonated by the laser. In theory, the explosion had occurred at a safe distance, far[185]enough ahead of them so that the sub itself would not be damaged; nevertheless, Khan spent a few apprehensive seconds reviewing the calculations in his head.
We should be in little danger,
he thought,
unless these mines pack considerably more
firepower than the conventional models.

He heard the young lieutenant gulp involuntarily as the shock wave passed over them, leaving them shaken but unscathed. “Is that it?” Khan asked mockingly. He grinned wolfishly at the captain. A loose lock of hair fell across his eyes, and he brushed it away from his face; he had eschewed a turban in deference to the submarine’s low ceilings. “Our foes will have to do better than that if they hope to halt our advance.”

He had no doubt that Hunyadi’s forces had strewn the strait with mines, in a vain attempt to eliminate their vulnerability to sea attacks. But they had woefully underestimated both Khan’s resolve and his resources.
A fatal mistake,
he prophesied.

“Again! the exuberant weapons officer called out. Khan glanced at the screen in time to glimpse a second white blip fade away, like a meteor burning out of existence. “We got another one!”

This time Khan did not grab on to the cabinet handle for support. Instead, anticipating the shock wave, he spread his legs apart, bracing himself against the jolt, which caused the floor of the sub to roll beneath his feet as though the submarine were being tossed about atop a stormy sea and not cruising unseen over two hundred meters below the waves. Dangling cords and cables swung wildly back and forth. The deep-sea turbulence reminded him of the[186]life-shattering tremors that had shaken Maharashtra over four months ago, adding fuel to the righteous fury smoldering in his chest. His fists clenched at his sides, he rocked in sync with the tempest-tossed sub, determined never to be thrown off-balance again by Hunyadi’s treacherous machinations.

As before, the disturbance generated by the mine’s explosive death throes subsided in a matter of seconds, having failed to put an end to the
Kaur’s
journey of vengeance. Khan felt justifiably proud of his ship’s stellar performance. “I believe, Captain, that the lasers have passed the test with flying colors.”

“So it seems, sir,” Hapka admitted. A worried expression belied his grudging endorsement of the laser defense system. His gaze darted upward, as if anticipating an attack from above. A low ceiling, equipped with white fluorescent lights, blocked his view of the thick steel hull above the control room, all that protected them from the pressure of two hundred meters of icy seawater. “Those mines were noisy buggers, though.”

Khan understood the captain’s concern. Destroying the mines, however necessary to their mission, had inevitably compromised the
Kaur’s
stealthy passage through the strait. Who knew what hostile ears might have registered the twin detonations, and thus inferred the presence of an intruder in their waters? A sub’s greatest asset was its silence, and the
Kaur
had just been forced to ring an underwater doorbell—twice.
So much for the element of surprise,
Khan thought ruefully. He could only pray that word would not reach Hunyadi before the
Kaur
came within firing range of Dubrovnik.

[187]To his credit, Captain Hapka did not suggest turning back and aborting the mission. Just as well; Khan would have sacked him instantly had he done so. “We should be on guard against an enemy vessel,” Khan commented.

“Always, sir.” Hapka turned and issued fresh instructions to the OOD. “Change course heading by two-oh-five degrees, and take us down another fifty meters.” Khan understood that the captain was taking evasive action to throw off any hostile parties that might have detected the clamor of the exploding mines. “Return to our original course and bearing once we’ve put a kilometer or two between us and those firecrackers back there.”

Cassel repeated the captain’s orders to the diving officer, who instructed the sailors actually manning the helm controls. Khan felt the floor tilt beneath his feet as the sub descended at roughly a ten-degree angle.

If fortune was with them, the maneuver would allow the
Kaur
to continue its voyage unchallenged, even if the zigzag cost them a little extra time. Khan resolved to remain patient. He had waited four months to strike back at Hunyadi. Another hour or so would make little difference.

Or so he hoped. A sudden, loud ringing noise, like the sonorous peal of an enormous bell, echoed within the control room, dashing all such expectations. Khan did not need the captain’s help to know what the ringing meant: the
Kaur
had been located by another vessel’s sonar.

An intercom crackled to life, bearing urgent messages from the sonar room.
“We have contact!

Underwater, bearing straight toward us, speed thirty knots
...
”
[188]There was a momentary pause as the Kaur’s computers attempted to identify the approaching vessel from its sonar profile. On the TV

screen monitoring the sonar shack, a headphone-wearing crewman listened to the approaching signal with a look of acute concentration, identifying its source just as quickly as the computers. “An
Akula

-class attack sub, closing fast!”

“Battle stations!” Hapka reacted. He bounded back up onto the periscope pedestal, snatched a handheld speaker from its cradle, and repeated the order into the intercom. Khan hurried after him, taking the steps two or three at a time. “Recharge lasers!”

Khan cursed beneath his breath. Obviously, they had not left the site of their minesweeping activities fast enough; the twin detonations must have attracted the
Akula,
which Hunyadi had surely acquired from his allies within the Russian navy.
It seems we must battle our way to Bosnia after all,
he realized. He assumed a commanding posture, his hands clasped behind his back, his jaw set defiantly.
Sobe it.

Rotund chimes reverberated through the control room, loudly testifying that the hostile sub was still

“pinging” the
Kaur
with its sonar. Tinted red emergency lights began flashing inside protective metal cages. Despite the
Kaur’s
considerable firepower, Khan felt uncomfortably exposed and vulnerable.

“Sonar to Conn, enemy is flooding torpedo tubes.”Preparing to attack, in other words.
“Opening
torpedo doors!”

Hapka spit out orders faster than water gushing through a perforated bulkhead. “Begin targeting, snapshot mode. Lasers for defense. Torpedoes for attack.” Grave concern deepened the creases of the captain’s weathered features. He glared along the[189]bearing of the attacking sub. “Flood the tubes—and get me those solutions, pronto!”

Khan instantly grasped the captain’s strategy, to use the lasers against any oncoming torpedoes while targeting the
Akula
itself with
Kaur’s
own torpedoes. Shrewd tactics, he judged approvingly, especially since the
Kaur
had at least one very special torpedo in its arsenal.

“Two torpedoes launched and running!”the sonar room warned, then began a continuing report on the projectiles’ speed, bearing, and range. At the same time, Khan knew, a linked computer system transmitted all the sonar data on the approaching torpedoes to the targeting circuits of the laser defense system.
“Torpedoes have acquired!”
the intercom blared, meaning that the enemy torpedoes had successfully locked onto the
Kaur. “Repeat: torps have acquired!”

“Lasers?” Hapka asked fiercely, glancing at the weapons control station to his right. Khan drew comfort from the knowledge that, even underwater, a beam of light traveled faster than a jet-propelled torpedo.

“Taking a snapshot!” Bataeo called out. Targeting was a tricky business, especially with three swiftly moving objects involved. Ideally, there would be time to check and recheck all the relevant computations before firing; while under attack, however, the best the computers could do was take a quick “snapshot”

of the situation and hope for the best. “Torpedoes acquired, sir!”

“Lasers, fire!” Hapka ordered, and Khan visualized twin sapphire beams coursing outward to intersect with the deadly torpedoes. He caught himself holding his breath, then willed himself to relax as much as

[190]was superhumanly possible. Would his glorious career end here, beneath the unforgiving sea? If so, Khan vowed to meet his fate bravely, regretting only that Hunyadi and his minions did not perish before him.

Another underwater shock wave buffeted the
Kaur,
the explosion feeling much closer than before. The submarine yawed sharply starboard, throwing Khan against the massive steel column of the electronic, high-tech search periscope. His red silk tunic caught on a metal bolt, tearing the fabric and scratching the skin underneath. Khan ignored the pain, worrying instead about any injury to the sub itself. Had one of the torpedoes struck the ship, or merely exploded dangerously nearby?

“Torpedo One—destroyed!” Bataeo reported with a grin. Perspiration gleamed on her bright, attractive features. Her jubilant tone evaporated a heartbeat later as she stared at her screen with a look of dismay.

“Target Two—still closing!”

No!Khan thought. The lasers had stopped one torpedo, but missed the other. “Brace for impact!”

Captain Hapka shouted, only seconds before the guided warhead smashed into the
Kaur.

The platform pitched sharply and Khan wrapped his arms around the lowered periscope, holding on for dear life. Undersea thunder roared in his ears, along with the clanging of battered metal. The overhead lights sputtered, so that, for a few unnerving moments, the control room was lit solely by the glowing, multicolored displays and control panels embedded in the walls, like exotic, bioluminescent fish shining in the waters of a darkened aquarium. Khan glanced over at Hapka; to his shock and chagrin, he[191]saw the captain’s body lying sprawled upon the matte-blue floor of the pedestal. His bloody brow matched a crimson smear on the casing of the adjacent periscope. Khan guessed that Hapka had cracked his head against the attack periscope during the impact.

With no time to ascertain the extent of the captain’s injuries, Khan immediately took command. “Call a medic for Captain Hapka,” he instructed the deck officer brusquely; Cassel was doubtless a competent sailor, but, at this critical juncture, Khan preferred to trust his destiny to no one save himself. “I am taking charge of this vessel.”

The OOD gulped visibly, but, wisely, did not challenge Khan’s decision. “As you command, Your Excellency.” Drawn features and an anxious tone betrayed the Frenchman’s uneasiness.