book, that you’re an expert on every chapter. I’m sure that if there is an accepted procedure for countering a blow, for firing a weapon, for maneuvering against an enemy in space, that you can both quote and direct every one of them to perfection.” His tone darkened slightly. “I’m talking about what humans generally refer to as ‘gut reaction.’ Fighting without thinking. Battle in the absence of any procedure or rules. If you can’t break a rule, how can you be expected to break bone?”
The science officer did not reply. It was evident their prisoner was, however mildly and in his own peculiar fashion, enjoying taunting him. It appeared that Spock would not give him the satisfaction of participating in such a meaningless exchange.
But his hands tightened just a little more.
Tiring of a game in which only he knew all the rules, Khan turned back to Kirk. “Your admiral used me to help design new weapons. To realize his vision of a heavily militarized Starfleet. That was the purpose of his precious, private Section 31. Starfleet was content to let him supervise one small, unimportant research project: After all, was he not an admiral of the fleet? Some minor improvements, some small advances, he allowed to be passed up along the research chain to show that his project was making progress and that it was deserving of continued funding. Other advances, particularly those in whose development I personally participated, he continued to shroud in ‘necessary’ secrecy until they were sufficiently ‘perfected’ for them to be revealed to Starfleet at large.
“And then? He sent you to use those weapons. To fire my torpedoes at an unsuspecting world. He purposefully saw to it that your ship would become crippled in enemy space, leading to one inevitable outcome.”
He had their full attention now, he saw. It was all so easy.
“The Klingons would come searching for whoever was responsible for the intrusion and assault on their homeworld, and you would have no chance of escape. You would have no choice but to fight back. The Klingon Empire, quite reasonably, would be outraged. Marcus would finally have the war he talked about—the war he always said he wanted—all because of a renegade captain engaged in an unsanctioned mission of personal vengeance. Think now a moment, Captain: Where did your orders come from to sally forth to kill me? Directly from Marcus. Did you ever receive any complementary orders from anywhere else or anyone else in Starfleet? No. It was all Marcus, it was just Marcus, it was only Marcus. You were, you are, not engaged in a mission on behalf of Starfleet. You are engaged in a mission on behalf of Admiral Alexander Marcus.” He paused a moment to let it all sink in.
“You are a pawn, Kirk. Advanced across the board to be sacrificed for the aims of your king.”
The captain met Khan’s gaze and did not waver. “No . . . no. Whether true or not, none of that changes the known fact that I watched you open fire on a room full of unarmed Starfleet officers and support personnel. You killed them in cold blood.”
For the first time, Khan allowed a crack to appear in his hitherto-unvarying visage. A hint of pain, or perhaps a suggestion of loss, finally drove him to raise his voice.
“Marcus took my crew from me. While I alone was revived, they were kept in frozen stasis. My pleas to similarly revive them fell on deaf ears. Ears were numb to my need, to my pain. Help design new weapons, I was told, and eventually your crew will be restored to you. ‘Eventually.’” The laugh that escaped his lips was short and bitter. “‘Eventually’ came and went, with no indication that even one of my crew would be revived. No matter how much I pleaded, no matter that I went down on my knees and begged, ‘eventually’ always kept receding into the future. It was plain that in the mind of Alexander Marcus, eventually actually meant never.”
“You,” Kirk countered sharply, “are a murderer! ”
Racked with growing rage and emotion, Khan pretended not to hear him. “He used my own friends to control me. Realizing that he meant to keep me his vassal until I died, I tried to smuggle out my crew to safety by concealing them in the very weapons that I designed. But I was discovered. At that point, I knew Marcus would no longer risk my being alive, lest others in Starfleet discover what