“You can’t transfer your troubles, Jim,” McCoy said. “This is a personal problem, not a personnel problem.” He was right, again, but I didn’t have to listen.
“This may be my last entry,” I said into the recorder the Metrons had given me. I was on a bleak, hot, uninhabited planetoid, sitting on an outcropping of minerals, exhausted. The pain in my right leg was blinding. I thought I was done. I looked down at the minerals at my feet. There were diamonds and sulfur. Something lit in my memory, but it was faint. I was looking for weapons, something that could kill a formidable, deadly creature. I struggled to remember the connection between sulfur and weapons. I pulled myself up and kept going.
The Federation colony on Cestus III had been destroyed by a race known as the Gorn. The Enterprise had chased the culprits into an uncharted section of space. Another race, who called themselves the Metrons, had astonishingly reached out from their planet and stopped both vessels, plucked me and the Gorn captain off of our bridges, dropped us onto this desolate, rocky place, and told us to fight it out.
From the beginning, I’d underestimated my opponent. He was a seven-foot reptilian, dressed in a gold tunic, and despite his staggering strength, moved much slower than me; I misinterpreted this as an indication he might not be as clever. But he’d lured me into a trap, and I was barely able to slip away with an injured leg. I had no food, no water; in a short time I’d be too exhausted to stay ahead of him.
When the Metrons put us on the planet, they said there’d be weapons, yet I had not found any that could kill my opponent. But I couldn’t give up. They had also said that if I lost the battle, my ship would be destroyed.
I stumbled onto a large rock and slipped to the ground. My hand landed in a white substance, a granular powder. It looked familiar. I tasted it. Salty. The memory connected to the sulfur now finally came forward.
Sam.
I’m five years old and watching my brother, Sam, build a cannon in our barn. He had soldered old tin cans with the bottoms cut out, and then he spread out three piles of chemicals onto an old table.
“What’s that stuff?”
“That’s sulfur,” he said, pointing to a pile of yellow powder, “the black powder is charcoal, and the white is saltpeter.” Before he could stop me, I had tasted the saltpeter.
“Spit that out!” I immediately did what he told me.
“You said it was salt.”
“Saltpeter. You don’t eat it.”
“What’s it for?”
“Gunpowder.”
I then watched as he confidently and carefully mixed the chemicals in the right amounts, then ground them together. I remembered that taste, and on Cestus III, I tasted the white powder on my hands and spit it out. It was the same. I smiled at the memory. Sam’s cannon was going to save me.
History records that I defeated the Gorn with a bamboo cannon loaded with diamonds for cannonballs. Amazingly, the blast of diamonds coming out of a cannon only stunned the strange creature. But I had the advantage and could’ve killed him; I spared his life, however, and because of that the Gorn and the Federation now live in peace. I owed it all to Sam.
But I never got to tell him.
Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and I sat across from Khan Noonien Singh. I had found him and his followers in suspended animation in an ancient spaceship. The product of controlled genetics, he was the superman whose rule of over a quarter of the planet Earth in the 1990s I’d studied at the academy in John Gill’s class. And now, he was here in the present—the day before, he had taken over my ship and tried to kill me. He’d done this with the help of one of my officers, ship’s historian Lieutenant Marla McGivers. She’d mutinied because she’d fallen in love with Khan. With her help, he’d revived the 72 followers still in suspended animation on his primitive ship. They quickly had taken over the Enterprise. But Khan couldn’t run the ship without my crew, and they wouldn’t follow him. When he tried to kill me, McGivers had a change of heart and intervened to save my life. I was able to retake the ship.
Now, we were all cleaned up in our dress uniforms at a hearing to determine what to do with Khan and McGivers. Despite her last-minute change of heart, I still couldn’t forgive her act of mutiny. I looked at Khan, under guard, but still a leader. In that moment, I somehow forgot who he was, that he was a murderer, a dictator responsible for the death and oppression of millions. Instead, I fell in love with the idea that I would make a civilized decision.
“I declare all charges and specifications in this matter have been dropped,” I said. McCoy was the only one who protested, but I cut him off and turned to Spock. He and I had already had a conversation regarding Ceti Alpha V, a planet that wasn’t too far off our current course. It was a world of mostly jungle, with a variety of indigenous predators. The offer I made to Khan was he and his people could live there. It was arrogant on my part, but I didn’t see it. I thought I was making the humane choice. These people had so much potential, it would be such a waste to confine them to a reorientation center, where they’d probably spend most of their time trying to escape. Instead, I gave Khan a world that was his to tame. He answered the offer with a smile.
“Have you ever read Milton, Captain?” He was referencing Lucifer’s comment as he fell into the pit: better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. His response was educated, rarefied, civilized. I was admiring him, and he was playing me for a fool.
I turned to my mutinous historian. Did she want a court-martial or a life on this unforgiving world with the man she loved? She of course chose the latter; no one was going to get in the way of the romantic, heroic ending to this story that I’d helped to engineer.
The prisoners left the room, and Spock ruminated on what we’d just done.
“It would be interesting, Captain, to return to that world in a hundred years and to learn what crop had sprung from the seed you planted today.” It was a wonderful, hopeful thought, exactly what I was thinking when I’d proposed it.
Of course, we would be going back a lot sooner, to face the consequences of the biggest mistake of my career. But for the moment, I was confident and happy in my ignorant hubris.
It would take about a week to reach Ceti Alpha V. During the trip, I had confined Khan and his followers to one of the ship’s cargo bays, and had a force field established around it. I had the bay filled with enough food and supplies so we wouldn’t have need to bring the force field down; I didn’t trust that they wouldn’t try to take the ship again. When we reached Ceti Alpha V, I would have them beamed out of the cargo bay and directly down to the planet. During the trip, I had Scotty rig up some cargo carriers on the hangar deck to be used as temporary living quarters on the planet, which I would drop there once we arrived. I was inspecting his work when Spock came to see me.
“We’ve had another request for you to perform a marriage ceremony.” I looked at him, incredulous. Why would he bring this up now?
“Can’t it wait until after we drop Khan off?”
“I do not think so, sir. The request comes from Khan.” I exchanged a look with Scotty.
“Here’s one reason I never want to be captain …” Scotty said.
I told Spock we couldn’t do it, that having 72 genetically engineered wedding guests was too big a risk. He countered that Khan had already offered to wait until we arrived at Ceti Alpha V, and that his followers could be beamed down to the planet. The only people required at the wedding were he and McGivers. I felt it had to be some sort of trick, but Spock didn’t agree.
“I have given it a fair amount of consideration, Captain,” he said. “Khan is a primitive man from a primitive time. He may take some comfort in ancient Sikh rituals.”
“Wait,” I said. “He wants a Sikh wedding?”
Spock was ready for this, too. He had assigned Ensign Chekov to research the customs for such a ritual, in the event I approved it. But the whole thing seemed unbelievable. I had to question Khan myself, so I went back to my quarters and communicated with him through the viewscreen on my desk.
“Khan, forgive me, but is this a joke?”
“I think you have known me long enough, Captain, to appreciate I have no sense of humor.” He had me there. “I do not know what my situation will be once we arrive on that planet, and I want Marla to have the honor of being my wife from the moment we set foot on that new world. We are going to conquer it together.”
“Then I guess … we’re going to have a wedding.”
We arrived at Ceti Alpha V. I had the cargo pods brought down to the surface, then had Khan’s people beamed down, leaving only Khan and McGivers on board. I put on my dress uniform again and went to the chapel. Khan and McGivers sat on pillows that Ensign Chekov had procured from Lieutenant Uhura’s quarters. The only guests, also on pillows, were Spock and McCoy. Five security guards lined the walls. I came in and sat on the one empty pillow, obviously reserved for me.
It was as close to a traditional Sikh wedding as we could approximate; Chekov gently prodded me through the ceremonies of the “Anand Karaj,” which translates into “Blissful Union.” The bride and groom announced their love for each other and detailed their roles in the equal partnership. It managed to be both quaint and progressive. The tradition ended with the groom taking the bride away from her own family, which in this situation had its own significance.
We escorted them to the transporter room, and as they stepped on the pad I saw a happy, contented, proud couple. Even Khan was not going to be denied marital bliss. I beamed them down.
“So you’re telling me,” Matt Decker said, “it was all an illusion.”
I was in the conference room aboard Decker’s ship, the U.S.S. Constellation. A few days before, war had been declared between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. It had lasted for two days (and hence became known as the Two-Day War). I had been at the center of it, knew the most about it, so Commodore Decker, who was commander of the main force that was about to face off against the Klingons before the war was abruptly cut short, wanted a debrief. Admiral Nogura was also present via subspace and stared at us through the viewscreen in the center of the table.
“Not exactly an illusion,” I said. “I should probably start from the beginning.” I could see the doubt in Decker’s expression, and I couldn’t blame him. It had been a difficult truth to accept. When war had been declared the Enterprise had been sent to Organia, a centrally located Class-M world, to secure an agreement with the local populace for Starfleet to use the planet as a base of operations. We’d found a primitive people who didn’t seem impressed with us, or the coming danger. They refused our help, and shortly thereafter the Klingons arrived.
Spock and I were stuck on the planet, in disguise, surrounded by hundreds of Klingon soldiers. All I could think about was Axanar. I was about to watch an innocent, peaceful society shattered by a Klingon occupation. The military governor, Kor, was everything I’d come to loathe about his species: arrogant, ruthless, proud of his society’s glorification of war. It gave him a disgusting sense of entitlement that legitimized his atrocities on the weak.
But the Organians weren’t powerless innocents. They only gave the illusion of being humanoid, and were in fact beings of pure energy, many millions of years more advanced than us. They put a stop to our war, deactivated our ships in space and our weapons on the ground. I was initially infuriated; I thought of myself as a man of peace, but my hatred for the Klingons had blinded me. I wanted a war, and the Organians weren’t going to let me have my way. Because I had dealt directly with them, I had more time to accept the situation; after I finished my report to Decker, I could see he hadn’t.
“We can’t just let these beings tell us what to do,” he said. Decker was having the struggle I’d just experienced, facing that humanity wasn’t the most advanced civilization in the Galaxy, that we weren’t even close. “We’re not going to just sit by helplessly—”
“The Klingons are as helpless as we are,” I said. They’d handed both the president of the Federation and the Klingon Chancellor a finished treaty, with an implied threat they’d disable our ships wherever they were if either side violated it.
“They’ll figure some way out of this,” Decker said. “We have to assume we’re still at war and go forward with our plans. I could drop the bundle on Qo’noS* in two days …” This last comment was directed at Nogura, who held up his hand and shook his head. It was clear that Decker was referencing something that I wasn’t cleared for. Nogura told Decker they had their orders, that the president of the Federation Council, the Andorian Bormenus, told Starfleet Command that we would abide by the treaty. Decker didn’t look happy, and I wondered whether he would ever accept the situation.
And I also wondered what “the bundle” was.
But there would be no war, at least not for a while. It was the third war I’d been a part of stopping since taking command of the Enterprise. I felt I was making a difference; I was a part of history.
I was soon going to have to figure out how to save it.
* * *
* EDITOR’S NOTE: It has been a generally accepted theory that the “magnetic space storm” the Valiant encountered was in fact an unstable wormhole that the scientists on the ship were unfamiliar with.
** To this day, there is no widely accepted scientific explanation for the origin of the field of negative energy that completely surrounds the Galaxy.
* EDITOR’S NOTE: Captain Kirk’s instincts were correct. Shortly before publication of this work, Starfleet declassified a trove of documents from the Romulan War revealing, for the first time, that Starfleet Command and the leaders of Earth were aware of the Vulcan-Romulan connection during the war and kept it a secret to protect the Vulcan-Earth relationship.
* EDITOR’S NOTE: Pronounced like the English word “Kronos,” this is the Klingon Homeworld.
CHAPTER 7
THE ANGEL WHO CAME DOWN THE STAIRS of the basement immediately saw to our needs and gave Spock and me a job.
“Fifteen cents an hour for ten hours a day,” she said. “What are your names?”
“Mine’s Jim Kirk,” I said. “He’s … Spock.” What I knew of America in this period of the 1930s was a general lack in interest or education of the public in other cultures. I figured Spock would pass as some generalized Asian.
“I’m Edith Keeler. You can start by cleaning up down here,” she said, and headed back upstairs. I really didn’t want her to go.
“Miss,” I said. “Where are we?”
“You’re in the 21st Street Mission,” she said. It had a religious ring to it. I found myself hoping she wasn’t a nun.
“Do you run this place?”
“Indeed I do, Mr. Kirk.” She left us to the messy basement. Spock and I immediately got to work cleaning it up. This is not where I expected to find myself a week ago, when the Enterprise was patrolling the [REDACTED] sector, and we’d started getting the strange readings on the chronometers. Spock had noticed that, every few hours, they were “skipping” a millisecond. He traced the source to an unknown particle wave, and the Enterprise tracked it back to its source: a planet, in the star system [REDACTED], over [REDACTED] light-years from the nearest world of the Federation.*
As we approached the strange old world, the particle wave’s effect became much stronger, and the Enterprise was buffeted by what Spock described as “ripples in time.” One of these ripples caused McCoy to accidentally inject himself with the dangerous stimulant Cordrazine. He left the ship a raving madman; Spock and I took a landing party down to the surface to find him.
On the world, a relic of a long-dead civilization, what could only be described as a glowing donut three meters in diameter announced:
“I am the Guardian of Forever.”
A time portal. Without even asking, it showed us Earth’s past in the hole of the donut. McCoy, before we could stop him, leaped into the portal.
We lost contact with the Enterprise immediately. McCoy had somehow changed the past. Spock and I then used the portal to follow him back in time
in the hopes of stopping further damage. We couldn’t be exact in our calculations; we only knew we arrived sometime before McCoy. We didn’t know how much time we had.
For now, we had to clean a basement. The tools we had to work with were primitive and inefficient; the brooms were old and constructed of straw. They pushed the dirt on the floor around, but left residue behind. There was also a lot of irreparable furniture and other refuse that didn’t look worth saving.
“Assuming a seven-day workweek,” Spock said, “ten dollars and fifty cents a week for each of us in ancient U.S. currency.” I had no idea how much money that was, relative to the time we were in. Spock pointed out that it wasn’t necessarily the limit of our earning potential, as it left 14 hours in a 24-hour cycle to find other gainful employment. I was incredulous.
“We need to sleep,” I said.
“I do not need to sleep,” Spock said.
I couldn’t argue with that, but said we wouldn’t have time to find any work if we didn’t figure out how to clean the basement. Spock suggested a phaser locked on a minimal disintegration setting would allow us to dispense with the dirt without harming the structure. This struck me as cheating.
“I was unaware that we were engaged in a competition,” Spock said. I reconsidered all the work we had to do, and decided the time stream wouldn’t mind if we took a shortcut.
“Set your phaser. I’ll watch the door,” I said.
Even with the help of our 23rd-century tools, it still took a couple of hours to clean the room. As we were finishing, the smell of cooking wafted down to us. It was a combination of meat and onions, which I found intoxicating. I realized we’d not eaten in hours, so I hurried us to finish, and we went upstairs to the mission.
It was a small place with a kitchen, a cafeteria-style eating area with an upright piano, another room with about 15 cots with a common bathroom and shower. The smell of the food became stronger, but it was now mixed with the other powerful scents of coffee, rotting wood, and body odor.
The Autobiography of James T. Kirk Page 18