AN: Cerridwen neatly caught an error in the last chapter regarding the number of Khan's cryotubes. I wrote that there were 58, and I honestly have no idea where I got that number from because there should be 71. Thanks for spotting that, Cerridwen!
—it and then they were on the Array. He hastily checked himself and Sh'athylnik, making sure they both had the usual number of arms, legs, and antennae. Sh'athylnik gave him a puzzled look.
Kirk shrugged. "I think my CMO is rubbing off on me," he whispered.
It seemed appropriate to whisper: it was night on the Array, or at the least the illusion of it. The farm was dark and still, silent except for the occasional hooting of a distant owl. Kirk and Sh'athylnik walked across the lawn toward the barn, the grass swishing softly against their boots and sending up the sweet, dry smell of late summer. Inside, they both pulled out their tricorders. Their machine-hum seemed loud in the quiet.
"The data processing system is behind this wall," Sh'athylnik murmured, gesturing.
Somewhere nearby, a banjo began to play softly. Kirk nodded to Sh'athylnik. "You know what to do."
As she slipped away, he crossed the barn, following the sound of the banjo. Around a corner he found the Caretaker sitting on a low stool, plucking at the instrument cradled in his arms. He didn't look up as Kirk approached.
"Well, you're nothing if not persistent," he grumbled, and plucked out another chord.
The Caretaker looked frailer and more tired than Kirk remembered. He could really believe Trance was right, and he was dying. Even though he knew it was only an illusion, he found it hard to hold his anger when faced with this querulous old man.
"We need you to send us back where we came from," Kirk said, more gently than he'd intended.
"That isn't possible," the Caretaker said. "I've barely enough strength to complete my work."
"The conduits. You're sealing them before you die."
"If I don't, the Kazon will steal the water." His expression turned despairing. "But in a few years, when the Ocampa's energy runs out, it won't matter. They'll be forced to come to the surface and they won't be able to survive."
"You did something," Kirk said, the pieces falling into place. "Something that turned their planet into a desert. That's the debt that can never be repaid, isn't it?"
The Caretaker leaned forward, eager for Kirk to understand. "We're explorers from another galaxy. We had no idea that our technology would be so destructive to their atmosphere. Two of us were chosen to stay behind and care for them."
"There's another like you here?"
"Not anymore," he said sadly. "No, no. She went off to look for more interesting places."
Leaving him all alone, far from his home and his people, trying to make right what he had done wrong. Leaving him to die.
But… "Why were you bringing ships here?" Kirk pressed. "Why infect people with a fatal illness?"
"Oh, they didn't die of an illness." The Caretaker turned dismissive. "They died because they were incompatible."
"Incompatible with what?"
"I've been searching the galaxy for a compatible biomolecular pattern. Now, in some individuals I found cellular structures that were similar, but I—"
Kirk couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You've been trying to reproduce?"
It made a terrible kind of sense. The virus-like symptoms McCoy had seen in Chekov and Kati must have been a side-affect as the Caretaker's genetic material tried to recombine with their own.
"I needed someone to replace me," the Caretaker explained earnestly. "Someone who'd understand the enormous responsibility of caring for the Ocampa. Only my offspring could do that."
There were so many things wrong with that statement that Kirk didn't even know where to start. "Did you ever consider letting the Ocampa care for themselves?" he tried.
The Caretaker scoffed. "The Ocampa are children."
"The Ocampa have children," Kirk corrected. "Most of them are adults. Their technological advancement doesn't change that. It doesn't make them less, only… naive." The Caretaker looked at him without any understanding, so he crouched down, putting their faces at the same level, hoping it might help. "We're explorers, too. Most of the species we've encountered have overcome all sorts of adversity without anyone to take care of them. It's the challenge of surviving, surviving on their own, that helps them grow and evolve."
That was the whole point of the Prime Directive, to allow each species to learn and change in its own way, its own time, without interference from outsiders who thought they knew what was best for it. He had been wrong to interfere on Nibiru, Kirk realized, not because it got him in trouble, but because he had assumed the Nibirans were unable to handle the challenges the universe threw at them. He had treated them like children, when they were not.
"Maybe," he said gently, "your children will do better than you think."
The Caretaker met Kirk's eyes, and even though the wrinkled old-man face was only a mask, he could see the real personality behind it. He thought, for a moment, that he might be getting through. And then his communicator chirped.
He stepped away from the Caretaker and flipped it open. "Kirk here."
"Captain, we have a problem."
Of course. It would be too much to ask for something to go according to plan. "What's going on, Spock?"
"Khan has escaped."
Kirk went hot, then cold. His grip tightened on the communicator until the plastic creaked in his hand. "How?" he rasped.
"Unclear. He never arrived at the Brig and his escort is not responding to hails."
"You mean he's running loose around the ship?" Kirk demanded.
"We are searching for him now, Captain," Spock said. "All sensitive areas have been secured, including Sickbay and the cargo hold containing the warheads."
"Keep me posted. Kirk out."
He snapped the communicator shut, not trusting himself to say anything more. As satisfying as it would be to yell at Spock, he knew it wasn't the Vulcan's fault. Kirk was the one who had let Khan out of the brig in the first place, let him come on away missions and move about the ship. What the hell had he been thinking? He'd let Khan fool him, just as Marcus had warned him he would.
And how many people would pay for his weakness?
The two Magog ships, while no match for the Enterprise, were doing surprisingly well at—how would Dr. McCoy phrase it? "Giving her a run for her money." They were quick and maneuverable, and the Enterprise was hampered by her desire to hold them off, not destroy them. Nonetheless, Spock was confident in the odds of their victory, and his greatest concern, as he sat motionless in the captain's chair, was Khan's current freedom about the ship. So it was relief—or it would have been, if Spock felt relief—when Uhura turned to him and said, "I have the latest security report. They've located Harrison's escort."
"What is their status?"
"Alive," Uhura said, sounding surprised. She paused, listening to the receiver in her ear. "They were knocked unconscious and concealed in a storage locker on deck five. Dr. McCoy says they'll be fine."
"Interesting," Spock mused, "that he chose not to—"
"There's more, sir," Uhura interrupted. "There was an unauthorized transport from Transporter Room Two. Someone overrode the transporter lock and beamed out when we lowered our shields to transport Commander Sh'athylnik and the Captain."
"What was the target?"
Uhura's eyes, which had gone distant as she listened to the incoming report, lifted to Spock's. Her expression was grave. "The Vengeance."
They both turned toward the viewscreen. The Vengeance swung into view as Sulu performed a virtuosic roll, turning the Enterprise to avoid a barrage of weapons fire. The other ship was still dark, but Spock knew that might not last long. Her warp core was dead, but she still had impulse and weapons—and she was designed to be flown by a skeleton crew. Khan had just gained control of the most powerful weapon on the battlefield.
While the rest of the bridge crew hunched over their panels, monitoring condition and readings, Spock and Uhura stared at the specter of the Vengeance—and so they were first ones to see a tangle of light explode out of nothingness and spit out one of the largest ships they had ever seen.
It was fully as large as Nero's ship, the Narada, which had destroyed Vulcan, and had a similar spiky appearance. But where the Narada had been a mining ship altered to carry weapons, this ship had clearly never had any purpose but to destroy. It dwarfed both the Enterprise and Vengeance, and made the Kazon ships look like toys.
The strands of light around it faded and vanished and it began to cruise slowly toward the array. Smaller vessels spewed out of a dozen ports across its surface and streamed toward the Enterprise. The smaller ships had sharp, dagger-like hulls, haloed by four insect-like appendages whose function Spock could not immediately ascertain.
The strands of light faded and disappeared as the bridge erupted into controlled chaos.
"Sensors reading eighty-nine new targets—"
"Weapons are locked on to us—they're firing—"
"Aft shields are dropping, sixty-two percent—"
Spock raised his voice over the barrage of reports. "Evasive maneuvers, Mr. Sulu. Return fire at will. Lieutenant, get me Ms. Gemini or Reverend Behemial."
Their passengers must have been nearby, because it was only three minutes and twenty-seven before Trance, Kes, and Rev Bem hurried onto the bridge. They checked short at the image on the viewscreen.
"May the Divine protect us," Rev Bem murmured.
Spock refrained from commenting on the unlikeliness of that scenario. He had learned through hard experience that those who, against all logic, believed in divine beings were often very sensitive on the subject. "Is there anything you can tell us," he said instead, "regarding the tactics and capabilities of our opponents?"
Kes and Trance looked too horrified to speak. "The smaller ones are swarm ships," Rev Bem said hoarsely. "Each one carries dozens of warriors. They will attempt to pierce your hull with the points of their vessels, releasing the warriors inside. And then…"
He did not need to finish. McCoy had briefed Spock on Magog physiology, and it was not difficult to deduce what would happen next.
"And the larger ship?" he pressed.
"That… that shouldn't be here," Trance whispered.
Rev Bem shook his head. "I have never seen anything like that before."
Spock considered the changed battlefield—the Enterprise alone and hopelessly outnumbered against the enormous swarm of ship, and perhaps the Vengeance as well—and was forced to conclude that the probable outcome had changed from near-certain victory to near-certain defeat.