Chapter 50: Goodbye Enterprise
One after the other, Kirk, Buffy, Dawn, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov, and Scott appeared on the surface of Genesis. Kirk, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov and Scott had phasers drawn while Buffy and Dawn held their hands as they waited, prepared for pursuit.
They had timed their escape closely. The enemy boarding party could have perceived the last glint of their transporter beam, could have tracked them by the console settings, and could have followed them. But they remained alone.
Unwillingly, Buffy and Dawn along with the rest of them looked up.
Stars pricked the limpid royal blue with points of light. This system contained only a single planet and no moon. All its sky's stars should be fixed, never changing their relationship to one another. But one, shining the dull silver of reflected light, moved gracefully across the starfield on its own unique path.
Slowly and delicately it began to glow. Its color changed from silver to gold. Then, with shocking abruptness, it exploded to intense blue-white. The point of motion expanded to a blazing, flaming disk, a sphere, a new sun that blotted out the stars.
The Enterprise arced brilliantly from its orbit. For an instant it was a comet, but the gravity of the new world caught it and held it and drew it in. It would never again curve boldly close to the incandescent surface of a sun, never again depart the gentle harbor of Earth to sail into the unknown. The gravity of Genesis turned the dying ship from a comet to a falling star. It spun downward, trailing sparks and cinders and glowing debris. It touched the atmosphere, and it flared more brightly.
Just as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished. One moment the Enterprise was a glorious blaze, and the next the sky rose black and empty.
Buffy and Dawn held tears in their eyes at what the felt from their companions. A ship they each had served on and loved as if it was one of them.
"My god..." Kirk whispered. "What have I done?"
"What you had to do," McCoy said harshly, his voice only partly his own. "What you've always done turned death into a fighting chance to live."
"He's right," agreed Buffy.
The tricorder Dawn carried had been reacting to the new world since the moment they appeared, but she had barely heard it. Now it forced itself on her attention. "Jim, planet's core readings are extremely unstable, and they're changing rapidly," she said.
Kirk wrenched his attention to the immediate threat. "Any life signs?"
"Close," she said as she scanned with the tricorder. She pointed slightly to their right. "There."
"Come on!" Kirk strode through the clearing toward the distorted trees.
0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0
In the dark forest on the side of the mountain, they heard a shriek of agony.
"We're getting close," said Buffy. "Whoever that is Dawn and I can feel the agony."
Kirk nodded as they redoubled their pace. They plunged up the steep slope. The faint trail wound between trees. They burst out into a clearing. Saavik stood in its center, supporting someone and a Klingon sergeant threatened her with a phaser.
Dawn and Buffy each raised their hands and pointed them at the Klingon.
"Don't move!" Kirk cried.
The sergeant spun in astonishment, leading with his phaser.
Buffy and Dawn each fired off a blast of energy and sent the sergeant flying backwards. He hit the ground and did not move again.
Kirk ran past the sergeant without a second glance. He slowed as he approached Saavik, who turned toward him, cradling an unconscious young man in her arms.
"Dawn," Kirk said softly upon seeing Spock.
Dawn came up beside Kirk and gently took Savvik's burden from her.
When Dawn's hand brushed Saavik's arm, she gasped and jerked away as if Dawn had given her an electrical shock. She took a step back, staring at Dawn.
"T'Lekus," Saavik said. Her voice broke, and she staggered. Dawn handed Spock to Buffy and then turned and caught Saavik and drew her close.
"Easy, Saavik," Dawn said. "Take it easy. It's all right."
"I tried," Saavik whispered looking at Kirk. "I tried to take care of your son . . ."
The auroras burned in the sky and lit the clearing with a ghastly glow. Jim saw, beneath a twisting tree, the body of his son. He walked slowly crossed the clearing. His boots crunched on fallen leaves.
Jim knelt beside David's body. "My son..." A poem whispered to him from a long-ago time. "'To thee no star be dark . . . Both heaven and earth . . . friend thee forever . . .""
Dawn and Buffy looked at each other feeling the grief Jim felt for his son.
Jim closed his eyes tight, fighting back the tears. He heard footsteps nearby. He opened his eyes and raised his head. His vision blurred, then cleared. Saavik stood before him. "What happened?" he said.
"He . . . he gave his life to save us," she said. She stopped, then shook her head and turned away. She said, very softly, "That is all I know."
"Jim!" Dawn said as she ran her tricorder over Spock.
Kirk stood quickly, responding to Dawn's concerned shout. He forced himself away from his grief, away from the dead and toward the living.
Dawn hunched over the body of Spock. "He's alive," she said. "But all of his metabolic functions are highly accelerated." She made her diagnosis calmly, despite its implications. "In lay terms his body is aging. Fast."
"And his mind?" Kirk asked.
Dawn glanced at her tricorder again and shook her head. "The readings of a newborn, or at best an infant of a few months his mind's a void, almost a tabula rasa."
"It would seem, Admiral," McCoy said drily, "that I have all his marbles."
"Is there anything we can do, Dawn?" Kirk asked, she had been Spock's personal physician on the Enterprise ever since she and Buffy had come onboard. That call had been made because of her familiarity with Vulcans due to her own experiences.
"We have to get him away from this planet," said Dawn. "Or he will die again. His aging is tied to the planet. As he ages, so does the planet."
Spock moaned. The ground shuddered as violently as he did. Saavik knelt beside him.
"Jim," said Buffy. "There is only one way to get off this planet, now. Or we'll die with Spock."
"Sadly, Buffy is right," Dawn said. "As long as Spock remains on this planet, he will keep aging and so will the planet till both dies violently. We must get Spock off immediately if we are to save him and ourselves."
Kirk opened his communicator. "Commander Kruge," he said. "This is Admiral James T. Kirk. I am . . . alive and well on the surface of Genesis." He paused. He received no reply except crackling electrical interference. "I know this will come as a pleasant surprise for you but, you see, my ship was the victim of . . . an unfortunate accident. I'm sorry about your crew, old boy. But c'est la vie, as we say back on Earth."
His answer was another convulsion of the ground, another crash of static, another blinding burst of light from the cloudless sky.
"Well?" Kirk said angrily. "I'm waiting for you what's your answer?" He forced himself to relax his grip on his communicator, to be patient, to wait and think. "I have what you want," he said desperately. "I have the secret of Genesis! But you'll have to bring us up there to get it. Do you hear me?"
Static drowned out any possibility of an answer. The sky and the earth rumbled, the young Vulcan moaned, the trees groaned and cracked, and in the background the aurora rustled, soft and eerie.
A tremendous crash of lightning and thunder obliterated sight and sound. His shoulders slumping, Jim Kirk folded his communicator and stowed it carefully away. He turned back to the remnants of his crew, whom he had led to their doom. He knew all but Buffy and Dawn would die on this planet. Buffy and Dawn would be ejected into space where they would freeze and float in the cold vacuum for the next seven hundred years before finally being able to die. For them it would be a fate worse than death.
Kirk sat on his heels beside his crew, Saavik and Spock, not knowing what to say. "Thank you" and "I'm sorry" seemed terribly inadequate.
"Drop all weapons!"
Startled, Kirk spun toward the voice.
The sky was a luminous backdrop, a curtain of wavering auroral light pierced intermittently by stars. Against it stood a huge shadow. It loomed above them on the pinnacle of stone.
Kirk rose carefully, drawing his phaser and dropping it, then spreading his empty hands.
Sulu, Chekov, and McCoy followed suit, but Dawn and Buffy who didn't need phasers remained with Saavik kneeling beside Spock.
The looming figure came a few steps toward them. The disruptor glinted in his hand. The hair of his crest rose.
"Over there," said Commander Kruge. "All but Kirk." He gestured to a trampled spot on the hillside.
Kirk made a slight gesture of his head.
McCoy, Sulu, and Chekov reluctantly obeyed. Buffy lifted Spock into her arms and she, Dawn and Saavik joined the others.
Commander Kruge spun open his communicator. "Maltz," he said, "the prisoners are at our first beam coordinates. Stand by." Keeping his gaze on Kirk, he picked up the phasers and flung them one by one, over the promontory and down the side of the mountain. Then he spoke into the communicator in his own language.
Everyone except Kruge and Kirk disappeared in a transporter beam.
0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0
Dawn materialized aboard the Klingon Bird of Prey. Buffy and the others appeared around her. One lone Klingon observed their arrival. The Klingon gestured with his disruptor. It was set to fire in a wide fan. It was clear that if anyone moved suspiciously, he would stun them all simultaneously and dispose of them at his leisure.
McCoy suddenly cried out in pain and fell to his knees. Chekov and Scott quickly moved to help him. Buffy, Dawn, Saavik and Sulu remained where they were.
The Klingon glanced at McCoy and Dawn smiled. She raised her hand unnoticed by the Klingon and fired off a blast of energy stunning him into unconsciousness.
0 – 0 – 0 - 0 – 0
Only a few hundred meters away, the whole hillside suddenly split open with a great roar of tortured rock. Scarlet light and intense heat fanned out of the fissure. The glowing magma thrust upward through the breach in the planet's crust. The waterfall that tumbled down the hillside flowed into the crack and over the molten rock, exploding into superheated steam.
Kruge strode closer to Kirk. "Genesis!" He shouted over the cacophony of the dying planet. "I want it!"
"You fool!" Kirk cried. "Look around you! This planet is destroying itself!"
Kruge smiled. "Yes," he said. "Exhilarating, isn't it? Give me Genesis"
The planet heaved and pitched beneath them. The outcropping on which they stood shattered and flung them forward. Kruge lost his balance and fell. His disrupter skittered across the stone, sliding down the hillside to the edge of the earth fault.
As Kruge struggled up, Kirk plunged forward tackled him. Kirk's breath rushed out as if he had run into a solid wall. Kruge roared with anger and caught him in the side with his fist.
He fell hard but managed to roll to his feet.
Kruge ran toward his disruptor. Kirk sprinted toward him and tackled him at the knees. They both went down. Half-stunned, staggering, Kruge rose. But Kirk managed to get up first. He pressed his advantage, hitting with short, sharp jabs that did little real damage but kept his opponent off-balance and flailing. He ducked beneath Kruge's long, powerful arms and hit him again.
There was the ring of a transporter beam. Someone was beaming down, Kirk realized.
A second later Dawn stood her hand raised. She spun around to face Kruge and Kirk. "Out of the way, Jim!"
Kirk dove to the side as Dawn fired a blast of energy hitting Kruge in the chest and sending the Klingon over the edge of the cliff and into the lava below.
Kirk scrambled to Dawn as she opened a communicator, "Summers to Bird of Prey. Two to beam up, energize!"
They felt the gentle tingle of a transporter beam forming around them. It dematerialized their bodies and carried them away.
The Bird of Prey's transporter chamber solidified into reality around them. Dawn led the way from the transporter chamber to the control room.
"How many?" Kirk said.
"Just one!" Dawn replied. "I subdued him and he is now resting of a stun blast of my energy in their brig."
Doors opened for them and they stepped into the control room.
"Let's get out of here!" Kirk said as he and Dawn stepped onto the bridge.
Everyone else had already taken a spot.
Beyond the viewport, the Genesis sun contracted and brightened. It was a few minutes, no more, from nova. The instability of the planet affected its orbit in an accelerating manner. As the path decayed, the world spiraled toward the sun, drawing the ship along with it.
"Dawn?" said Kirk the only person he knew fluent in Klingon.
Dawn moved beside Sulu. "If you don't mind, Hikaru?"
Sulu stood as Dawn sat down. She touched a control and moved another control to its farthest extent.
The ship whined. Everyone flinched as the sound wavered, then relaxed as it steadied and strengthened.
"We have full power," said Dawn.
"Go, Dawn!"
The ship arced around, accelerated out of orbit, and hurtled at warp speed from the deteriorating system.
Dawn stood and let Sulu resume the controls. She read the language and told him according to the labels what control did what. He picked it up quickly.
Sulu put the aft view on the viewscreen. They saw the planet fall toward its sun, which burned with an intense blue-white light. Stellar flares burst from the incandescent surface, reaching out to capture anything within their grasp.
The only thing within their grasp was the Genesis world.
With shocking suddenness, the sun engulfed it.
The Genesis world was gone.
"Good-bye, David," Jim Kirk whispered.
The disk of the star expanded, exploding to millions of times its previous volume until it was nothing but a tenuous, vaguely luminescent, spiral cloud of plasma.
"It will form another world," Saavik said.
Kirk glanced at her sharply.
"The protomatter will condense to a plasma of normal matter," she said. "The plasma will cool. It will condense to dust, thence to a star and a family of planets. This time, lacking the Genesis wave, it will be stable. A surface will harden, oceans will form, the sun's radiation will induce chemical reactions. Life will begin. In time . . . it may evolve as David and his friends intended."
"In millions of years," Kirk said.
"No, Admiral," she said. "In billions of years."
"I'm glad you find some comfort in the long view, Lieutenant," Kirk said.
Sulu spoke, breaking the uneasy tension between Kirk and Saavik. "We're clear and free to navigate," he said.
"Best speed to Vulcan, Captain." Kirk said.
Dawn moved beside Saavik, who sat at the communications station. She knew that if she or anyone from the Enterprise contacted Starfleet they would be ordered back. So, she helped Savvik to open a channel and then remained silent.
"Lieutenant Saavik of Federation science ship Grissom, calling Starfleet Communications. Come in, please."
"Communications to Grissom. We've been trying to reach you folks for days! A freighter just picked up a lifeboat with a couple of survivors from a merchant vessel they claim Klingons raided their ship!"
"It is likely their claim is true," Saavik said. "We . . . experienced a similar encounter."
"Are you all right?"
"I regret that we are not. We have a serious and continuing emergency. We have incurred many fatalities. We need your cooperation."
"You have it, Lieutenant. What do you require?"
"A patch into your library's database, and a general message to all ships between Mutara sector and Vulcan."
"The patch is made." The Starfleet communications officer paused a moment, then said in a startled voice, "Lieutenant, what communications protocol are you using? What the devil are you flying?"
"Please stand by," Saavik said.
Dawn instructed the Starfleet database and waited for the information Savvik had requested.
A new voice broke into the channel. "Cut that damned data link! Lieutenant Saavik! This is Starfleet Commander Morrow. What the hell is going on out there? Let me speak with Esteban!"
"I am sorry, sir," she said. "That is impossible."
He cursed softly. "I want some explanations! Have you seen the Enterprise?"
"The Enterprise is not within our range, sir," she said.
"What is the message you want us to relay?" Morrow said.
"Klingon Bird of Prey on course to Vulcan?"'
Dawn heard exclamations of astonishment.
Saavik continued. "This ship is not an adversary. It is held by a contingent of Federation personnel. It is running with shields down and weapons disabled. Essential that we reach Vulcan. Delay will result in further casualties. This ship is not an adversary."
"A Klingon Bird of Prey! Lieutenant, I ask again, where is Grissom? What in blazes is going on out there?"
"Saavik, out."
Dawn shut down the channel.
"Good work, Lieutenant," Kirk said.
Dawn then transferred the Starfleet data to Sulu's station. He gave her a smile of thanks.
"Estimating Vulcan at point one niner," Sulu said.
Federation ships dogged their path, but none offered a direct challenge.
"Dawn," Kirk said, "transmit a message to Ambassador Sarek. Tell him we bring McCoy, and Spock. Tell him . . . Spock is alive. Ask him to prepare for the katra ritual."
Dawn didn't bother bringing up the point that as far as she knew it was impossible to return Spock's katra to his body. She glanced at Saavik and shook her head telling the woman not to say anything. She looked back at the console and opened the channel. "This is T'Lekus of Vulcan to Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan."