STAR TREK - TOS (22 page)

Khan was worried, too, even though the
Kaur
could conceivably survive a single torpedo strike. Its dense double hull, modeled on that of a Russian
Typhoon
-classsupersub, had also been reinforced with a unique, impact-absorbing alloy found only in one remote and isolated African kingdom. Khan had gone to great lengths to obtain this alloy for his flagship, which might have been the reason he and the rest of the
Kaur’s
human inhabitants were still alive.

But for how much longer? Khan couldn’t even begin to guess what sort of damage had been done to the submarine’s vital systems and functions.
I fear the worst,
he thought.

“Lasers down!” Bataeo exclaimed, and Khan realized they had lost their first and best defense. “That second torp totaled the whole array!”

[192]Emergency power kicked in, bringing maybe eighty percent of the control room’s lights back on.

Khan spotted signs of damage amongst both the crew and the equipment. Warning lights flashed on nearly every console, while bruises, cuts, and minor burns scarred the faces of the anxious-looking sailors. Steam jetted from a ruptured pipe, hissing like an incensed cobra, until one of the crewman, stretching his arm to reach the ceiling, closed a valve manually. Sparks erupted from short-circuited control panels, until quenched by the hasty application of a fire extinguisher. A smoky haze contaminated the enclosed atmosphere of the control room, which smelled of cold sweat and apprehension. Khan heard men and women coughing at their stations.

Khan watched grimly, his face as immobile as a plaster death mask, as two sailors helped a fallen comrade back up onto his seat among the navigation consoles. The man’s leg appeared to have been injured in his tumble; Khan could not tell right away whether the limb was broken or merely sprained. In any event, the man did not request to be relieved from his duty, but instead returned to his post, grimacing in pain as he tried to bring the ship’s computerized global positioning system back online. A trickle of blood leaked from beneath the man’s pants leg onto the scuffed metal floor of the control room.

Brave souls,Khan thought, pride swelling within his chest. He could ask no better of his soldiers, and prayed only that he had not led them all to a watery death. “Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea,” he murmured after the Bard, “for an acre of barren ground.”

[193]Their foe gave them little time to nurse their wounds or assess their status.
“Torpedo in the
water!”
the intercom announced from the sonar room. Bursts of static broke into the warning, rendering key data inaudible.
“Bearing zzzt!-zero-zzzt! Speed forty knots. Range zzzt! thousand and closing
—”

Khan hoped the targeting computers were getting the full story. “Helm! Hard to port!” he ordered forcefully. With the lasers disabled, evading the torpedo was their only hope. He stepped over the captain’s prone and bleeding form to shout directly at the weapons control team. “Deploy countermeasures!”

“Yes, sir!” an alert Norwegian seaman acknowledged, as the
Kaur
jettisoned a pair of decoys via the ship’s ejector tubes. Khan heard them wailing loudly outside the
Kaur.
With luck, the noisemakers would confuse the torpedo, luring it away from the sub.

Cassel spared a moment to address Khan, “Your Excellency, you should go!” he urged. Khan could hear echoes of Joaquin’s worried voice in the Frenchman’s plea, and understood the man’s concern; it was unlikely that the
Kaur
could weather another direct hit, but there might still be time for Khan to escape the beleaguered sub, if he moved swiftly enough. “It is not safe for you here. The danger is too great!”

“No!” Khan roared. His very soul rebelled at the idea of fleeing from a battle before a single shot had been fired back at their foe.
We must destroy the
Akula
utterly,
he realized,
before they can attack us
again.
“Do we have a targeting solution plotted?” he asked Bataeo intently. “For our torpedoes?”

Seated at her console, the young weapons officer nodded. “Yes, sire. A good snapshot, at least.” Her

[194]fingers stabbed emphatically at her control panel. “Feeding the data to the torpedoes now.”

Then we still have a chance,Khan thought. “Fire at will,” he commanded, then paused for an instant as he debated playing his trump card.
Better now than never,
he decided. “Tube Four.”

He exchanged a glance with Cassel, who clearly understood the significance of Khan’s choice. “The Shkval?”

“Exactly,” Khan confirmed. “Nothing else is faster.”

An ordinary torpedo could travel at best 130 kilometers per hour, but the Shkval, an experimental torpedo developed by the Russians in the late seventies, and improved upon since, could reach a top speed of 100 meters per second; it operated on the principle of supercavitation, which reduced hydrodynamic drag by enclosing the torpedo within a self-generated bubble of water vapor and gas.

Khan had paid a pretty penny to obtain a single Shkval for his sub.
Hunyadi is not the only superman
with connections in the former Soviet Union,
he reflected somberly.

“Torpedo launched!” Bataeo reported. The boom of the Shkval’s ferocious exit from the tube resounded through the control room, momentarily drowning out the constant pinging of the
Akula’s
sonar.

Khan nodded in satisfaction. Only the Shkval, he reasoned, could turn the tide of the battle, by striking out at the
Akula
before the Russian sub could even begin to defend itself or retaliate. No submersible craft yet devised could move fast enough to evade the rocket-powered, supercavitating, ultrahigh-speed torpedo—assuming the Shkval performed as advertised.

[195]He held his breath, knowing the answer would not be long in coming.
Either we succeed now, or
almost certainly perish.

“Hostile torpedo veering away from us,”the sonar room reported, reminding Khan that a third enemy torpedo was still in the water.
“It’s going after the decoys!”

Khan smiled. Perhaps fortune was on his side, after all. A sudden shock wave, mild compared to the impact of the second torpedo against the
Kaur’s
outer hull, suggested that the oncoming torpedo had destroyed one or more of the noisy decoys rather than his submarine.
A miss!
Khan thought triumphantly Now it was up to the Shkval to ensure that the
Akula
did not have another chance to fire at the
Kaur.

“Closing, closing,” Bataeo reported on the Skhval’s progress, struggling to keep up with the torpedo’s murderous velocity She sounded like an auctioneer calling out bids at a rapid-fire pace. “Got her!”

The pinging of the enemy’s sonar halted abruptly, leaving only fading echoes behind. Khan heard instead, muffled but unmistakable, the sound of forged steel being torn asunder.
“She’s breaking up!”

the sonar room announced excitedly. Khan could hear the unseen sailor’s relief, even over the intercom.

“Target is destroyed. Repeat: target is destroyed!”

So falls another foe!Khan savored the intoxicating nectar of victory.
Come not between the dragon and
his wrath!
He basked in the adulation of the crew, who gazed up at him with gratitude and admiration upon their sweaty, smoke-smudged faces. He marched confidently to the forward edge of the periscope platform and gave the apprehensive OOD a hearty slap on the back. “Helm, continue course to Dubrovnik.”[196]He spoke loudly and clearly, so that the entire control room could hear him. “Let us send the butcher Hunyadi our compliments.”

Cheers and laughter greeted his jest. Trusting that the crew’s morale had been restored, and that the crisis had been averted, he felt at ease enough to see to Captain Hapka. The ship’s medic, a Dr. Hoyt, had already responded to Khan’s summons, and was even now kneeling beside the injured captain, who remained unconscious on the floor of the pedestal. Hoyt shone a light into Hapka’s eyes, checking the dilation of his pupils.

“Well, Doctor,” Khan addressed the physician. “How fares the captain?”

“A severe concussion,” Hoyt reported, “possibly a hairline fracture to the left parietal bone.” Khan noted that the doctor himself had not escaped the battle unscathed; his right hand was swathed in bandages and he seemed to be missing a tooth or two. “I do not think his injury is life-threatening, but I should get him to the infirmary.”

“Of course,” Khan agreed. He was reluctant to lose any of the control room personnel while the
Kaur
remained in hostile waters, so he instructed the OOD to summon a pair of sailors to assist Hoyt in transporting Hapka. “What other casualties do we have, Doctor?”

Hoyt bandaged the captain’s bleeding skull as he replied to Khan’s query. “Three enlisted men were killed by an exploding bulkhead in the turbine room, and another sailor was badly burned by a fire in the galley.” The doctor’s uniform smelled of grease and smoke. “Thankfully, there’s no trace of any radiation

[197]leakage from the reactor.” He shook his head dolefully at the very thought. “It could have been much worse, “Your Excellency.”

“This is so,” Khan affirmed. He regretted the loss of any lives under his command, but knew that his sovereign duty to avenge the murdered villagers of Maharashtra, and end Hunyadi’s overweening ambitions, justified whatever sacrifices were required.
Such are the fortunes of war,
he reflected, while resolving to see to it that the widows and children of the deceased crewmen were well taken care of, once today’s bloody business was concluded.

Khan found himself anxious to complete his mission and return to India. Glancing up at the TV screens mounted around the control room, he watched the crew battle to contain leaks and small fires all over the ship. To his relief, he spotted no fatal damage to the
Kaur’s
VLS missile tubes. “How soon can we launch the missile?” he asked aloud.

“Approaching launch point,” a navigation officer called out, keeping an eye on the automated plotting board. A GPS-based target plan had already been entered into the missile’s guidance system; the
Kaur
merely needed to reach the preprogrammed launch location to ensure an accurate strike. “Estimated time till launch point: ten minutes, sixteen seconds.”

All the better,Khan thought, anticipation setting his blood pounding. At long last, the hour of vengeance was almost at hand. “Take us up, Helm,” he commanded eagerly. The
Kaur
needed to ascend to periscope depth before releasing the Tomahawk, plus slow to a near stop. “Reduce speed to one-third.”

But before the diving officer could relay Khan’s[198]orders to the two men controlling the ship’s diving planes and rudder, a sudden explosion rocked the entire submarine. The periscope platform lurched starboard, throwing Khan hard against the safety rail, bruising his ribs. Blue-hot sparks flared from control panels, forcing their operators to leap backward or risk electrocution. Sundered metal shrieked in protest in the crawlspace beneath the control room, and the periscopes rattled within their housings.

Helmsmen, buckled securely into their seats, wrestled with their control wheels, fighting (and failing) to keep the
Kaur
on an even keel. “What havoc is this?” Khan gasped in confusion. His eyes feverishly searched the shaking compartment, seeking an explanation.
Another attack sub?

His Gallic countenance as pale as a raw oyster, the OOD supplied an answer. “A mine, Your Excellency!” He glanced down from the pedestal at the floor below, a look of bitter realization on his face. “It must have been hiding on the seabed, waiting for us to pass over it!”

Khan cursed himself for failing to think three-dimensionally. He had vaguely known of the existence of such mobile mines, capable of launching themselves from the ocean floor when they detected an enemy submarine above, but had worried only about the mines floating directly in his path.
Would Captain
Hapka have been caught so unawares?
he wondered, in a rare moment of self-doubt.
Only the
unforgiving spirits of the sea may ever know
. ...

“Your Excellency! Lord Khan!” the OOD shouted over the shrill, hysterical keening of emergency klaxons. Warning lights flashed at every station, but[199]Khan was proud to see that not one seaman had deserted his post. The OOD staggered across the pedestal, cradling a bleeding arm, until his face was only centimeters away from Khan’s. “You must flee, sire!” he said in an urgent hush, coughing from the greasy black smoke pervading the control room. “This ship will not see the sun again!”

Flee?Khan shook his head violently, whitened knuckles holding fast to the safety rail, which crumpled beneath his powerful grip. His distraught brown eyes took in the heartrending site of the doomed sailors valiantly staying at their posts amidst the wreckage of the control room. How could he abandon such people, such loyalty?

“No, no,” he murmured. The OOD tugged on Khan’s upper arm, trying to pull him toward the steps at the rear of the platform, but Khan angrily yanked his arm free. “Unhand me!” he shouted, his face contorted by rage and despair. He shoved the OOD aside, his unchecked strength sending the Frenchman flying, so that he slammed backward into the lowered optical periscope several paces away.

Where has my victory gone?
Khan stormed inwardly, certain vengeance snatched without warning from his grasp.
What must I do now?

With laudable persistence, the cast-off OOD shrugged off his brutal collision with the periscope and limped back across the platform toward Khan. “Lord Khan,” he insisted, anguished, idealistic eyes beseeching his chosen commander. “The world needs you!”

His heartfelt plea gave Khan pause, cooling to some slight degree the volcanic emotions surging within his chest. Part of Khan wanted nothing more than to go down with his ship, yet another, more[200]

calculating segment of his soul argued against that fatal temptation, reminding him that he had a responsibility to the greater realm beyond the ruptured walls of this dying sub. Perhaps there was no better way to honor the sacrifice of these gallant men and women than by ensuring that they did not die in vain.
I must survive to continue the fight,
he realized,
for the sake of all humanity.