“23174611. Coordinates not far, spatially speaking, from Earth. If you want to know why I did what I did, if you can find room in your head and heart for more than just a primitive, animalistic desire for revenge, go and take a look.” He smirked. “Such a search would not be out of keeping with your overall mission statement. There would be no repercussions from Starfleet.”
Clever. The man facing him on the other side of the barrier was as adept mentally as he was physically. It was what Spock had warned him against. Kirk was wary of allowing himself to be drawn in even to something as seemingly harmless as a suggestion.
But Harrison was right. The Enterprise could scope out the indicated coordinates without the risk of being countermanded by Starfleet. Especially since said coordinates might somehow relate not only to the capture of Harrison but to the carnage that had taken place back home in San Francisco. Kirk wanted very badly to comply. Still he hesitated.
“Give me one reason why I should listen to you?”
Harrison leaned forward until his face was almost pressing against the barrier. “I can give you seventy-two. And they’re on board your ship, Captain.” His tone was relentless, matter-of-fact. “They have been all along.” Gratified by Kirk’s reaction, by the evident surprise on the captain’s face, the prisoner stepped back from the transparent wall that separated them. “I suggest you open one up—and take a look.”
X
“Are you out of your corn-fed mind?”
Flanked by Spock, who hovered close, Leonard McCoy spoke as loud and as near to Kirk as he could without risking a charge of infringing on a commanding officer’s personal space. Though McCoy’s face was flushed and he bordered on the apoplectic, Spock made no move to intervene: a sign of how seriously the science officer viewed the doctor’s opinion on the matter at hand.
“You’re not actually going to listen to this guy? He killed Pike, among numerous others,” McCoy continued vociferously. “He almost killed you. And now you think it might be a good idea to pop open a torpedo just because he essentially dared you to?”
Seated in the command chair, Kirk listened to his friend’s words with half a mind while the other kept to its own counsel. “He also saved our lives. Mine, Spock’s, Uhura’s. There’s no disputing that. He could have killed me, killed all of us, with ease. Instead, he surrendered. I think it’s important to know the reason why.”
McCoy was not dissuaded. “That’s what he wants you to think. Jim, someone like Harrison doesn’t do things because they’ve suddenly experienced a change of heart. There’s a reason behind everything they do, and it has nothing to do with a sudden penchant for philanthropy. If he saved your lives, he did so because he saw something in it for him. Something that would help advance his agenda—whatever that might be.”
“The doctor does have a point, Captain,” Spock added softly.
Looking away, an agitated McCoy muttered: “Don’t agree with me, Spock. It makes me very uncomfortable.”
Kirk swung around to face both men. “Scotty quit because of those torpedoes. He wouldn’t stay on board without knowing what was inside them. I’ve decided that he was right, and not just because Harrison suggested it. We need to know.”
Straightening, McCoy gestured in the general direction of the distant holding area. “Jim. That man in the brig is a homicidal maniac who wants us to blow ourselves up! Maybe that’s why those ‘new’ torpedoes are on board. So he could maneuver you into poking through their guts. Maybe if anyone tries to open one, it’s set to protect itself by self-destructing. He’s hooked you with a challenge, don’t you see that?”
Kirk spoke thoughtfully without looking up at the doctor. “No. No, that’s too obvious a ploy, and whatever else Harrison is, he’s not obvious. He’s demonstrated that already. I think there’s another reason he wanted to be brought aboard the Enterprise. We need to find out what that is.”
“Maybe he wants to say all is forgiven so he can enlist.” His tone acidic, McCoy was now beside himself. “I think he’s gotten under your skin—he could be stalling for some reason. That would explain this challenge of his for us to go to these unvisited coordinates. He could be working with the Klingons!”
“Perhaps you, too, should learn to govern your emotions a little, Doctor,” Spock broke in. “In this situation, logic dictates—”
“Logic!” McCoy sputtered. “My God, there’s a maniac trying to make us blow up our own ship and you’re—”
Having come to a decision, Kirk raised a hand to forestall the rest of the doctor’s rant. “I don’t know why he surrendered, but that’s not it. We’re gonna open one of the torpedoes. That’s my decision. The question is, how.” Having forcefully terminated one discussion, he energetically embarked on another. “What’s the best way? The safest way?”
McCoy let out a snort of disdain. “I’ve heard the story behind the loading of those weapons. We have no schematics, no diagrams, no operating files. Without Mr. Scott on board, there’s no one appropriately qualified to pop open a newly designed four-ton stick of dynamite. Even our weapons specialists won’t attempt a break-in without explanatory software—or Mr. Scott’s expertise.”
“If I may offer a thought, Captain?”
Kirk eyed his science officer. “Always, Mr. Spock.”
“It has come to my attention that the admiral’s daughter also has an interest in the new torpedoes, and she is a weapons specialist. Perhaps she could be of some use.”
Kirk whirled. Captain and physician gawked at the Vulcan. “What?!” Kirk stared hard at his first officer. “What admiral’s daughter?”
“Carol Marcus,” Spock explained blithely. “Your new science officer concealed her true identity in order to be assigned to the Enterprise.”
Kirk made no attempt to conceal his bewilderment. “When were you going to tell me that?”
“When it became relevant,” a complacent Spock assured him. “As it just did.”
* * *
“Are the torpedoes in the weapons bay?”
Carol Marcus spoke without looking at Kirk as the two of them strode swiftly down the corridor. Meanwhile, a hundred questions raced through Kirk’s mind. Unfortunately, they were not neatly aligned, and the result was a jumble that prevented any one of them from coming to the fore in anything resembling a coherent fashion. It did not help that she plainly had an agenda of her own.
“Prepped and loaded for use in the weapons bay,” he informed her. Somehow, he thought, every-thing that had happened since the slaughter at Starfleet Headquarters seemed to keep coming back to the new weapons system. But why? “What are they? What’s so special about them other than that they’re supposed to be undetectable when in flight?”
She looked over at him. “I don’t know. That’s why I manipulated a transfer onto your ship—to find out.” Halting abruptly, she turned to face him, plainly embarrassed. “I do apologize for that, and I am sorry. I’m Carol Marcus.”
Yeah, I know. He extended a hand. “James Kirk.” Before he could add anything else, she whirled and resumed her rapid pace.
Fine, he thought. She’s apologized. He could only hope she was planning to be honest with him from now on. So . . . if her serious interest was in the new torpedoes, why was she heading toward the shuttle bay? He could have stopped her and asked, but found it potentially more revealing to let her lead the way. She made no attempt to evade his attention or leave him behind.
“I don’t understand,” he finally pressed her. “You’re investigating your own father? And how are you English?”
“He was stationed in London when I was born, but soon afterwards my parents split up. When I was old enough, I joined Starfleet to follow in his footsteps. I’m not particularly proud of using my connections, but it was the only way I could gain access to the diversity of programs he personally oversaw. He never seemed to mind. In fact, I think he encouraged my curiosity. We never kept things from each other. Not that I ever had much to conceal from him. Then”—she hesitat
ed, uncertain how to proceed—“things . . . changed.”
“How so?” Kirk prompted her.
“I learned he was working with programs intended to develop new weapons. When I started my usual poking around, my security clearance was revoked.” She shook her head in disbelief, remembering. “There had never been a hint that I was doing anything wrong or that I was expressing an interest in something I shouldn’t have been inquiring about. One minute I had access to anything and everything to which my father was connected; the next, to nothing. As far as security was concerned, Starfleet cut me off completely. But that wasn’t the worst of it.”
“Go on,” he said gently. They were almost to the shuttle bay now.
“When I went to confront my father to find out what had happened, he wouldn’t even see me.” She made a small sound in her throat. “We’d been close, very close, my whole life, and suddenly he won’t see me. Wouldn’t talk via communicator, wouldn’t even acknowledge receipt of a simple message. But it didn’t stop me from trying to find out what had caused the rift. I suspected it might have something to do with his then-current project.
“I had to call in every favor I had ever earned. There were people, friends, who risked their careers to feed me information. I learned about the research on a new type of torpedo. Then, when I tried to dig a little deeper, what I found was that the very same torpedoes and everything related to their development had disappeared from official records. Hell, they’d disappeared from the unofficial records. Even rumors about them had been expunged from general discussion.”
Realization had long since struck Kirk. “And then he gave them to me.”
Standing on the steps leading into the nearest shuttle, she nodded and smiled back at him. “You’re much cleverer than your reputation suggests, Captain Kirk.”
Pleased to have the mood lightened, however indirectly, he responded in kind as he followed her into the shuttle. “I have a reputation?”
Without pausing or asking for authorization, she selected the nearest shuttle and started up the entryway. “Yes, you do. I’m a friend of Christine Chapel.”
Something landed in the pit of Kirk’s stomach that bore no relation to the remainder of his previous meal. “Oh. Christine. How is she?”
From the airlock opening Carol looked down at him. “She transferred to the outer frontier to be a nurse. She’s much happier now.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“You have no idea who I’m talking about, do you?”
“If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly are we doing in here?”
“Would you please turn around?”
“Why?” He was genuinely baffled.
She eyed him evenly. “Just turn around.”
He complied, and she continued talking.
“You said you wanted to crack one of those torpedoes. So we do, after all, have something in common. Since their explosive power is unknown, worst-case scenario is they’re planet killers. Even if they’re designed to do no more than their conventional counterparts and take out an enemy vessel, I don’t think attempting to open one on this ship in the absence of so much as a snapshot of its guts would be very wise, do you?”
Aware that conversations were inevitably more efficacious when conducted face-to-face, Kirk turned. Inevitably, he did not make initial visual contact with her eyes.
Regulation Starfleet undergarments, he decided, had rarely looked quite so fetching.
“Turn around,” she repeated.
“Yeah—right.” For a second time he complied with the request. But the brief image he had glimpsed remained sharp in his memory.
“There’s an uninhabited desert planetoid in range,” she continued. “I can fly there—it lies within shuttle reach—but I cannot disarm a torpedo alone, especially in the absence of any relevant information regarding its insides. In lieu of such schematics, I’ll need the assistance of your chief engineer.”
Kirk coughed into a closed fist. “My chief, uh, quit.”
As she continued to don the exosuit she had chosen, she looked over at him curiously. “Did he? Why?”
“I ordered him to sign off on delivery of the torpedoes.” The damn weapons really were at the center of everything, he thought to himself. “He refused because he, uh, couldn’t get any information as to their internal components and design.”
She smiled thinly. “Well. What a coincidence. Not so clever after all.”
If there was one thing Kirk never lacked, it was a smart retort to a direct criticism. Well, almost never.
* * *
The bar was sophisticated enough to be left alone by the authorities, yet sufficiently disreputable to be fun. Situated in a part of San Francisco that had been the location of such establishments since the founding of the city, it was a glittering farrago of flashing lights, obscure décor, and throbbing music. Its multilingual staff catered to the needs of every known species that enjoyed indulging in stimulants. While oxygen-breathers predominated, there was a separate room for methane suckers. Those who required gaseous supplements with different chemical compositions could put down a deposit and enjoy the use of the establishment’s portable tanks and masks while paying only for what they inhaled.
Blasting loud and hard, music from several worlds overrode conversation, lover’s quarrels, bad jokes, and the occasional San Francisco earthquake. The décor varied from antique North American southwest to outré samples of current technolo. Due to its location and the tolerant touch of its bouncers, the place was very popular with the personnel from the nearby Starfleet complex.
This extended to and included one Montgomery Scott. Having imbibed a considerable portion of the potion for which his homeland was famed, the engineer exhibited in his present condition a decided inclination toward an unstable equilibrium. Only the fact that he was presently seated in a booth opposite his first assistant enabled him to remain upright. At least his upper body remained upright. Other than that he could not be sure, because he was having a hard time feeling anything below his waist. Across from him the stone-faced non-human Keenser was gazing morosely into his own drink out of wide black eyes, wondering why he had allowed his chief to talk him into resigning along with him. As much as he respected Scott, the Roylan was glad the table was wide enough to keep the chief from poking him in the face as Scott punctuated each new sentence with a challenging jab.
“You know what bothers me the most?” the chief was saying for the third or fourth time. Keenser couldn’t be sure, because his own absorption of alcoholic liquids had rendered suspect his usually infallible ability to crunch numbers. “The modifications I made to standardized equipment. The enhancements I made. And then just like that, I’m off the ship! Just for trying to do what’s right!”
Across the table the squat Roylan nodded solemnly, still staring into his glass. Within its amber depths the lightly tinted liquid held mysteries unknown, not to mention the shattered fragments of his own aborted future.
Peering across the table, Scott bellowed accusingly. “And what did you do, anyway? You just stood there like an oyster, lookin’ at me, ya wee sleekit cowerin’ beastie!”
An insistent chirping interrupted the unfounded but nonetheless energetic harangue of his silently stoic assistant. What was that damnable noise? Was the bloody universe itself now intent on driving him mad? It had to be the focused emissions of a dying pulsar, aimed with fiendish precision at the back of his head—or else someone was calling him. Unable to decide between the two or influence the first possibility, he opted to try his communicator. It required three fumbling tries to snap it open.
“What?” he shouted into the pickup.
The connection was not the best, suggesting that it was being bounced along via multiple relays.
“Scotty,” came the static-distorted but now familiar voice, “it’s Kirk.”
“Oh, well now!” As he leaned against the back wall of the booth, an expression of enormous satisfaction spread across the engineer’s fa
ce. “James Tiberius Kirk? Savior o’ the galaxy and dismisser o’ all rational thinking? Callin’ me? A lowly an’ self-disgraced engineer? To what do I owe the pleasure . . . sir.”
“Scotty, Uhura had to work a minor miracle to make this tight-beam transmission possible, not to mention secure.” There was a pause, then Kirk’s tone turned uncertain. “Is that technolo I hear in the background? Where are you?”
Scott dismissed the captain’s question with an airy wave of his free hand while a morose Keenser dipped a thick forefinger in his drink and commenced stirring memories.
“At present, I’m somewhere between heaven an’ hell, Captain. Otherwise known as San Francisco.” The chief chuckled at his own humor.
Burdened with concerns of somewhat greater import, Kirk did not join in the amusement. “Are you drunk?”
“Is that an engineering question? Are you now questionin’ me ability to handle liquids as well as me job? What I do in me spare time is entirely me business, Jimbo. And in case it has escaped your notice, I am no longer a member of your crew, and therefore no longer subject to your orders.”
From a very long distance away, Kirk took a deep breath before resuming the conversation. “Scotty, I’m starting to have my doubts about those torpedoes.”
Kirk’s unexpected words managed to penetrate the alcoholic haze that had taken up residence in the chief engineer’s cerebrum. “I will consider that an apology.” Scott sat up a little straighter. Or at least that was the instruction he passed along to the muscles of his lower body. As he remained slumped, it was likely that the message got lost somewhere between his brain and his behind. “And I will consider that apology.”
“Scotty, I need you to check something out for me. Will you take these coordinates down: 23, 17, 46, 11 . . . Are you recording?”
The chief glared at his communicator as if it were personally responsible for his current situation. “You think I kinna remember four miserable numbers . . . What was that third one again?”
“Forty-six. I need you to go there and report back. I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, but I have a feeling you’ll know it when you see it.”
Star Trek Into Darkness Page 14