And I had some time alone with Carol. She too was going through a difficult period of mourning. Khan had tortured and killed her entire staff. She spent a lot of her days reaching out to their families, and I could see it was taking a toll. In bereavement, we found some comfort together.
One night, we were sitting in my quarters, sharing a drink. She told me about David as a boy, as a young man, and the difficulties of raising him by herself.
“He was lucky, though,” I said. “He always had his mother.” After a while, I could see she had something she wanted to ask me, but was hesitating. I forced it out of her.
“Did you ever get married?” she said. I told her I hadn’t, but she could tell that there was another story I wasn’t sharing. She pressed, wanted me to tell her about this mystery woman. I realized I had never really talked about it with anyone.
“Her name was Edith Keeler …”
We rescued the crew of the Reliant, all of whom survived, though they were in pretty rough shape, and took them all to Starbase 12. Carol had spent many years there, and she proceeded to set up a base of operations from which to coordinate the study of the Genesis Planet. She lobbied Starfleet Command to assign several science ships right away, but the Admiralty, for some reason, wasn’t cooperating. I tried to intervene, but they said they couldn’t spare any vessel. I volunteered the Enterprise, but Morrow pressed me on the damage that she had undergone, and I had to admit she needed more work before I could take her out again.
However, I had to help Carol and David. It was somehow related to Spock’s death. They were helping to fill a hole, and I wouldn’t give up. There was a new science vessel in orbit of Starbase 12, U.S.S. Grissom. It was finishing up some minor maintenance, and it turned out I knew its new captain. I decided to pay him a visit aboard his ship. I beamed up and walked onto the clean, bright bridge of the small vessel.
“Admiral Kirk,” J. T. Esteban said, “great to see you again.”
The Grissom was on a general patrol in this quadrant, but with Esteban’s help, we were able to get it assigned to this project. I again was kind of proud that I could do something to impress my son.
The news on the Enterprise, however, wasn’t so good.
“I cannot fix the damage without a spacedock,” Scotty said. “She’ll run at warp, but that’s about all. I’ve got to get her home.” The commanding officer of Starbase 12, Commodore Jim Corrigan, my old roommate from the academy, was very interested in my trainee crew.
“There’s going to be a lot of ships coming through here needing replacements,” Corrigan said. “It’d be a shame to make all those kids go all the way home just to come out here again.” So I talked it over with Scotty, Sulu, and Uhura, who agreed we could run the ship to Earth with a skeleton crew, and I let the trainees be reassigned. I wanted to stay longer at Starbase 12, squeezing every bit of time I could with Carol and David, when Uhura came to see me in my quarters.
“Sulu was only supposed to be with us for three weeks,” she said. “His ship is waiting for him back in Earth orbit.” I’d forgotten. I was torn, but I had an obligation to him. I told her to prep the Enterprise to leave orbit immediately. I went to say goodbye to Carol.
She was in her office with David, going over some of the data on the Genesis Planet. David and Saavik would be going on to begin studying the new world, while Carol would stay behind on Starbase 12 to find more ships. I promised her I was coming back with a fixed Enterprise to help on this mission. She smiled.
“You’ll forgive me if I take that with a grain of salt,” she said. As sure as I was that I was coming back, I decided not to argue with her. We had reconnected after all these years, and now I wanted to be with her again. I knew it was what she wanted too. My promise was real; for the first time, I saw the future.
I then turned to David.
“It’s been a pleasure, sir,” he said. I shook his hand.
“Call me … Dad,” I said. After a moment, we all laughed. It sounded ridiculous. “All right, don’t call me that.”
“You left him on Genesis!” Spock’s father, the Vulcan ambassador to the Federation, was in my apartment. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and he wasn’t sounding logical. He was sounding angry.
I’d come home to a lot of bad news. The Genesis Project was a galactic controversy. No one was allowed to talk about it, and we were all going to be extensively debriefed. This meant Sulu wasn’t getting his ship; they’d already given it to someone else. The Enterprise was going to be decommissioned, and I wasn’t getting another ship, not until the Federation came up with a policy on Genesis. But the worst of it was Bones.
I found him in Spock’s quarters on the Enterprise, babbling about having to go home to Vulcan. Spock’s death had wrecked him; he had had some kind of nervous breakdown. I remember thinking that I had always taken McCoy’s durability for granted: this reminded me he was only human.
And now Sarek, Spock’s father, whom I’d first met almost 20 years before, was shouting at me. He said I hadn’t carried out Spock’s last wish. I didn’t know what he was talking about. He asked to mind-meld with me.
Sarek’s thoughts reached into my head, opening the door to memories I had no desire to relive. I was back in engineering; Spock was saying goodbye. And he was dead again. Sarek broke the meld.
“It is not here,” Sarek said. He told me that Vulcans transferred their living spirit, called the katra, to someone or something when they died. But Spock hadn’t been able to meld with me. And then I put it together.
It was Bones. It wasn’t a nervous breakdown. Spock had melded with him, and somehow, McCoy had some bit of Spock in his brain. It was surreal, difficult to conceive, but Sarek’s assuredness that this was true drove me to act. Sarek said I had to get Spock’s body off of Genesis, and take it and McCoy to Mount Seleya on Vulcan. It was not going to be easy; Genesis was off-limits to everybody.
Morrow turned me down flat, so I went to my friends.
“I’ve asked for transporter duty in Old City Station,” Uhura said. It was the closest Starfleet transporter to the Starfleet security facility where McCoy was being kept. McCoy had gotten himself in trouble trying to hire a ship to take him to Genesis (clearly, on some level, he also knew what needed to be done), so we were going to have to break him out of prison. Uhura was a commander, and choosing this duty station would probably raise some red flags, but it would be too late before anyone noticed.
We were in my apartment: Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov. Breaking McCoy out wasn’t the biggest crime we were planning; we were also going to steal the Enterprise.
“There’s at least two guards on McCoy at all times,” Sulu said. “Visiting hours are over at 9 p.m., and the shift reduces to two people at 8:30.” Sulu and I would be going in to rescue McCoy. We would then make our way to the Old City Station transporter room, and Uhura would beam us to the Enterprise, where Scotty and Chekov would be.
“Scotty,” I said, “what about the Enterprise?”
“Chekov checked the automated systems this morning,” Scotty said. “My new captain has been keeping me pretty busy on Excelsior.” Scotty unhappily had been transferred to the new ship when we got back. But it would turn out to be our best bit of luck.
“Admiral,” Uhura said, “if we do this, what guarantee do we have that it will help Dr. McCoy?”
“Or Mr. Spock?” Sulu said.
I realized at that moment that I’d been risking not just my life and career on Sarek’s word, but theirs as well. I looked at my compatriots; they were willing to follow me without question, but I still owed them an explanation.
“I think the people on Vulcan will be able to help McCoy,” I said, “but I’m taking it on Sarek’s word that somehow Spock will rest easier. But I really don’t know. You all have to make your own decision.”
“We’ve learned a lot about Vulcan over the years through Spock,” Scotty said. “It always seemed to me that his people had a little bit of magic.”
; “Nothing could ever stop him,” Sulu said.
I looked over at Chekov. He was the only one not saying anything. He’d been first officer aboard the Reliant for a long time, and he’d lost his ship and his captain. I asked him for his opinion.
“Spock taught me how to be an officer,” Chekov said, “how to be a man. I think it’s worth the risk to try to get him to the Vulcan afterlife.”
“It is not I who will surrender, it is you!” The Klingon captain was calling my bluff, and I was out of moves.
We had stolen the Enterprise; Scotty had sabotaged the Excelsior so it couldn’t follow us, and we’d gotten ourselves to Genesis. A Klingon bird-of-prey was waiting for us. It was small, but menacing, and the Enterprise was in no shape for a fight. We got in one good shot, but the Klingons knocked out our automation system. There were only five of us on board; there was no way to make repairs. We were dead in space. The Klingons had us. They’d destroyed the Grissom, and had hostages on the planet. They wanted the “secret of Genesis.” They didn’t seem to realize that their hostages, Saavik and David, were more likely to have it.
Saavik said someone else was with them. “A Vulcan scientist of your acquaintance,” she said. Vulcan scientist. Spock. He was alive.
She also let me know something was wrong with the Genesis Planet, the thing the whole Galaxy was in an uproar about, but I didn’t care. Spock was alive. Spock was alive.
I was going to get him back.
And then the Klingons killed David.
The Klingon commander, Kruge, wanted my ship, so the goddamn Klingon killed my son. I stood by on my dead ship on my dead bridge and couldn’t do anything. My son, who I’d abandoned, who I’d only just gotten to know. Who was a wonderful, sweet, brilliant man. They killed him, because Kruge wanted me to surrender the Enterprise. He wanted to prove how serious he was about threatening the hostages. So I, in turn, showed him how serious I was.
I tricked most of the Klingon crew into boarding the Enterprise, and blew it up. McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, and I watched from the surface of the Genesis Planet as it burned up in the atmosphere. I’ve thought back to this moment many times over the years. That ship meant a lot to me; the happiest moments of my life were when I was sitting on that bridge, and when I’d lost my command of it, I fought hard to get it back. How could I destroy it? Yes, Kruge was threatening to kill the others, and I had to stop him. But did I really have no other option? The Enterprise was a dead ship, with outdated technology. I could’ve erased every bit of computer information; the Klingons would’ve gotten nothing if I’d given to them. My career was already over; wasn’t it worth our lives? I could’ve let myself be taken prisoner of the Klingons, trading myself for the hostages, and said I would tell them nothing if they didn’t let them go. And my plan of beaming the Klingon crew onto the doomed Enterprise was a huge risk; Kruge could’ve immediately ordered the hostages killed.
The truth was, I wanted blood. And as soon as David died, all the emotions I’d invested in the Enterprise seemed hollow; it was a ship, a technological marvel, but still a piece of machinery. At that moment, it was nothing but a trophy to my accomplishments, and I purposely threw it away as penance for my son’s death.
And now we didn’t have much time—the planet we were on was breaking up. We found Spock; the energies that had created the Genesis Planet had regenerated him. It was, as Scotty said, a little bit of magic. His mind, however, was in McCoy’s head, and if I could get them both to Vulcan, there was a real possibility we could get him back.
Nothing was going to stop me. I killed Kruge, and rescued Spock literally as the ground crumbled beneath my feet.
CHAPTER 11
THERE WAS NO COFFEE ON VULCAN.
The second day there, that was the least of my troubles, but I really wanted a cup of coffee. The Vulcans had strict rules about chemical stimulants, so none of their food replicators were programmed for it. Scotty found something on the Klingon ship called raktajino, but it really wasn’t what I wanted. There was also no alcohol, which I thought was also going to be a problem.
When we had arrived on Vulcan, as I expected, its people were able to put whatever was in McCoy’s head back into Spock’s. He wasn’t completely whole; he had some of his memory, but his mind would have to be retrained. Still, it was truly awe inspiring: he’d risen from the dead.
But it had come at a cost. We stole the Enterprise, Scotty sabotaged the Excelsior, I then destroyed the Enterprise, and we stole a Klingon ship after I killed most of its crew. Both the Federation and the Klingons wanted our heads on a platter (the Klingons, literally).
“We’re intergalactic criminals,” Chekov said.
“Scourges of the Galaxy,” Sulu added. Now, we were on Vulcan, near Mount Seleya, at the edge of the Forge, the great tract of wasteland that was home to so much Vulcan history. I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I asked Sarek if he could arrange for us to stay. Scotty, Chekov, Uhura, and Sulu could work on the bird-of-prey. If we could bring that ship home to Starfleet, maybe it would do a little to smooth over the trouble we’d caused. Maybe.
But my real reason for wanting to stay was Spock. He still wasn’t himself; they would have to retrain him. I wanted to see if he would come all the way back. It wouldn’t make up for what I’d lost, but it might make my life easier.
But my first duty was I had to call Carol to tell her of David’s death. She unleashed a rage that was frightening and justified. Her love and attachment to him was something I envied. She was also, like me, mad at herself.
And though David was investigating a planet that he helped create, the fact that he’d been killed in space by Klingons assigned responsibility for his death, in Carol’s mind, to me. She knew it was irrational; she was grieving for her lost child. I wanted to grieve with her, but I could feel that there was no real chance at reconciliation. The Klingons were my mortal enemies, and they’d killed her son. Rational or not, she would always blame me for his death. I said I would be in touch with her soon, but I never spoke to her again.
Sarek came to me on that second day. I assumed he was going to tell me we were going to be extradited immediately back to Earth; there were inviolable treaties guaranteeing that criminals could not find safe harbor on any Federation world. But Sarek said that was not the case, at least not right away. I was incredulous.
“Starfleet Commander Morrow’s going to want my head on the chopping block,” I said.
“Morrow is no longer the Starfleet Commander,” he said. Morrow, it turns out, was another victim of my crimes. He was the one who brought me back into the Admiralty, and as his reward, I stole a ship, wrecked another one, and stirred up a mess with the Klingons. He resigned in disgrace. One more life I ruined.
“Who took his place?” I said.
“Admiral Cartwright,” Sarek said. Cartwright had told Sarek that the Klingons were not yet aware that we’d stolen their bird-of-prey. There were a lot of secrets aboard her that would be tactically useful to Starfleet. Cartwright implied he would suggest to the Federation president we not be extradited. We may be tried in absentia, but with the help of the Vulcans my crew would find out all we could about the ship, before the Klingons tried to steal it back.
“Did he say we had a choice?” I said.
“He did not propose an alternative,” Sarek said. Cartwright hated the Klingons more than I did, and was looking for any advantage. He was appealing to my sense of loyalty, and really offering nothing definite in return, though there was an implicit suggestion that it would help us at trial.
I decided, initially at least, that it was better than going home to immediate imprisonment.
“In the meantime,” Sarek said, “my wife has invited you to join us for an evening meal.” This came as a surprise, but I of course took him up on it.
Sarek maintained his home in the city of ShiKar, whose spires rose out of the surrounding rocks and sands like enchanted crystal. Their house was one level, bright, airy, and modern, filled with scul
ptures, paintings, and other works of art. Amanda met us at the door.
“Admiral, it is wonderful to see you,” she said. Her warmth was infectious, and stood out to the aloofness of everyone else I’d been in contact with since arriving.
“Please call me Jim,” I said. Sarek led us inside, and we sat down to a meal that, though vegetarian, was more human than Vulcan. It was a lovely supper. I discovered that Sarek had taken on opening diplomatic talks with the Legarans, the lobster-like species I had encountered several years before. I told him of our initial difficulties.
“You were ill-equipped to handle such a delicate first contact,” Sarek said. “Humans lack the patience necessary to construct even a structure for diplomacy with this species.” Amanda gave him an admonishing look, and I took a little umbrage at the insult; I’d made dozens of successful first contacts.
“How much patience would I need?”
“I estimate it will take seventy years before an agreement is reached to begin negotiations.” I looked to see if he was joking, then remembered that Spock was the only Vulcan who did that. I decided then, in this case, he was right, I did not have the patience.
When I got ready to leave for the evening, Amanda took my arm.
“You brought me back my son,” she said. “I know what you lost, and I’m so, so sorry.” In that moment, for the first time, I understood the wisdom of Vulcan society. I remembered David. The feelings of anger, despair, frustration invaded. I had no control of them, and I wished I had the discipline of a philosophy that would allow me not to feel.
Months passed and we worked on the Klingon ship, and I learned that though I had obviously spent a lot of time with Spock, that hadn’t prepared me for life on Vulcan. For starters, there was no small talk. People only spoke for a specific purpose; if they didn’t have one, they didn’t speak. Initially, it was unnerving; it was like a planet of awkward silence. But over time I came to appreciate it. And eventually all the logic began to seep in, and some of my emotions seemed to fall away. I was “going native,” and I think it helped me through a difficult period.
The Autobiography of James T. Kirk Page 27