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  Spock Messiah

  ( Star Trek: The Original Series (Bantam Novels) - 3 )

  Theodore R. Cogswell

  Charles A. Spano Jr

  Gene Szafran

  The victim of a cruel experiment, Commander Spock renounces the U.S.S. Enterprise, becomes the Messiah of the planet Kyros, and launches a holy war on the rest of the world.

  Theodore R. Cogswell. Charles A. Spano Jr. Gene Szafran.

  Spock Messiah

  CHAPTER ONE

  Captain’s log. Stardate 6720.8.

  This is our eighth day in orbit around the Class M planet, Kyros. Dr. McCoy has reported that initial trials of the telescan cephalic implants devised by Starfleet Cultural Survey Bureau have been generally successful. Though some survey team members complained of disorientation on first being linked with the Kyrosian minds, Dr. McCoy is confident that once each team member realizes he can consciously control the feelings of personality intrusion caused by the link, present complaints of feeling like two different people simultaneously will cease.

  Successful completion of our mission on Kyros will mean the acceptance of the telescan implant as a routine survey tool.

  Captain James T. Kirk, commanding the United Starship Enterprise, pressed his forefinger against a button on the log computer’s control panel, shutting it off.

  He yawned and stretched. The survey team had been beamed down for its third day on Kyros early that morning while he was still asleep. His watch had been strictly routine and a bit boring. He was looking forward to a long drink, a good meal, and an hour or so of solitude before the debriefing later that evening when the survey team was beamed up for the night.

  He leaned back in his thickly padded black command chair and gazed around the bridge of the great starship, nodding his approval of the quiet efficiency with which the bridge crew went about the complex and demanding business of running the Enterprise.

  The bridge was a circular chamber located on the top deck of the huge, saucer-shaped, detachable primary hull. It began to his left with the main engineering console, currently manned by Lt. Comdr. Montgomery Scott, and continued around to the ship’s environmental control console, engineering sub-systems monitor station, the visual display monitor—a viewing screen which could show any part of the ship’s exterior, but which now showed cloud-wreathed Kyros turning in its orbit some sixteen hundred kilometers below—then on to the defense sub-systems monitor, defense and weapons console, navigation, main computer and science station, now manned by the second science officer, Lt. Comdr. Helman, and lastly communications, where Lt. Uhura, a lovely woman of Bantu descent, was setting up another scanning program for the normal light and infra-red cameras trained on Kyros.

  Directly in front of Kirk was a double console containing the navigator’s station on the right and the helmsman’s on the left.

  Kirk raised his brown eyes from the twin console and studied the view of Kyros on the visual monitor. As he watched the televised image, he heard the turbo-lift’s doors hiss open behind him.

  Navigator Vitali and Helmsman Shaffer swiveled in their seats and nodded to the entering officers.

  Kirk turned and waved a greeting at the approaching pair.

  “Lieutenant Sulu…” began one.

  “Ensign Chekov…” chimed in the other.

  “… reporting for duty, sir,” they finished simultaneously.

  Kirk smiled. “Carry on, gentlemen, and a good evening to you both.”

  The two officers—Lt. Sulu, an Oriental of mixed ancestry but with Japanese predominating, born on Alpha Mensa Five; and Ensign Pavel Chekov, a terrestrial Russian with bushy black hair and a round, youthful face—took their seats at the combined console in front of the captain, as their off-duty counterparts stood and stretched luxuriously.

  “A long watch, Ensign Shaffer?” Kirk asked the young man.

  Shaffer nodded and said, “Aye, sir.” He gestured toward the image of Kyros on the monitor screen.

  “The first few days aren’t too bad; a new planet’s always sort of interesting, but after a while it can be a drag.” The ensign quickly added, “… sir.”

  “After the long run out here, just sitting with nothing to do is pleasant,” the female navigator said. “Some of the courses I had to plot were a little hairy. Opening up star routes in an uncharted sector of the galaxy can put wrinkles on a girl.”

  “We were lucky, Lieutenant,” Kirk said. “Finding life in only the third system we visited was like throwing ten sevens in a row.”

  “Well,” said Sulu, “a routine one-on and two-off schedule with no problems for three hundred parsecs is infinitely preferable to spending the rest of your life as, for instance, the plaything of a superpowerful alien juvenile delinquent.”

  See: “The Squire of Gothos,” STAR TREK 2, Bantam Books, 1968

  “Small chance of that happening here, Mr. Sulu,” Kirk said with a chuckle. “The Kyrosians have a D+ rating on the Richter Cultural Scale, at least the city-dwelling lowlanders do. The hill clans are fairly primitive nomadic herdsmen, as far as we have determined. When Spock and the rest of the survey party beam up tonight, we should be able to fill in the blanks. But you can relax, Sulu; we’ve picked up enough to know that there’s nothing down there that’s a threat to the Enterprise.”

  “In that case, sir,” Shaffer said, “Lieutenant Vitali and I are going to devote the first part of the evening to the pursuit of a thick pair of Terran beefsteaks.” Turning to the woman, he asked, “Care to chart a course in that direction, Navigator?”

  As the pair stepped up a short flight of stairs to the upper part of the deck and entered the turbo-lift, Kirk gave the bridge a last quick glance.

  “Everything seems to be in order,” Kirk said. “Mr. Sulu, you’ll take the con this watch.” He glanced to his left and saw Engineering Officer Scott stretching. “Ready to call it a day, Scotty?”

  The big, bluff, red-haired Scotsman nodded and his relief, Lt. Leslie, slipped into the padded black swivel seat at the console.

  “But, Captain,” Scott began in a thick burr, which somehow disappeared completely when he was under stress, “d’ye think it’s a gude idea to leave the Enterprise in the hands of sic a wee lad as Sulu?” He flicked his left eyelid at Kirk.

  Kirk caught the wink, and fell in with the jovial feud between Scott and Sulu, which had been underway ever since a debate over the merits of hot saki, as opposed to Scotch.

  “As helm officer,” Scott added lugubriously, “the bairn may be able to hold orbit—gie’en the proper supervision o’course—but the con, now; I think it’s a bit more o’ a load than those young shoulders can bear.”

  Kirk gave a mock frown. “You’ve a good point there, Scotty.”

  Sulu swung partway around in his seat to gaze in astonishment at the muscular captain who stood staring at him, hands on hips.

  “But, if Chekov could just keep an eye on things…” Kirk went on. “How about it, Navigator? If Sulu should start pushing the wrong buttons and send the Enterprise out of orbit and into a nose dive, do you think you could show him how to get back?”

  Chekov glanced at Sulu, then looked away. Helman snickered.

  “I’ll do my best, Captain,” he said in a Russian accent so thick the last word sounded like “kyptin.”

  “But would you straighten me out one more time… Do I push the green button for Up or the red one?”

  “Don’t tell him, sir,” Scott said. “Let him find out the hard way.”

  Laughing, the two officers turned and mounted the stairs to the raised deck, the engineering officer slightly ahead. As they were about to enter the turbo-lift
, Chekov leaned forward, studying the screens on his console intently.

  “Captain!”

  Kirk swung around. “What is it, Mr. Chekov?”

  “The scanners have picked up a radiation front coming toward us on course…” Chekov paused, did some fine tuning, then continued, “… on course 114, mark 31.”

  “Intensity reading?” Kirk asked levelly.

  “Intensity two at the moment, but a narrow scan indicates the beginning of a build-up.”

  Kirk stepped briskly to the science console on the raised deck. “Mr. Helman, verify please,” he ordered, now all starship commander rather than bantering superior. As Helman bent over his instruments, Scott moved back to the engineering console and began to perform his own operations.

  Moments later, Helman straightened up and said, “Something’s coming in, all right. How do you read, Mr. Scott?”

  “I can verify Chekov’s readings, too, but there’s nae to worrie aboot. The hull shielding’s good to intensity twenty. If the front builds beyond that, we can put up the deflector screens. Except for a nova’s blast, they’ll stop anything long enou’ for us to leave the vicinity.”

  “Mr. Helman, if you please,” Kirk said as he stepped to the science console. His strong fingers moved over the colored controls pressing and switching. He studied the results displayed in a small viewing screen.

  “I thought so… Mr. Helman, do you see it?” Kirk asked the science officer. “I thought it looked a little odd.” Helman murmured agreement. Turning, Kirk said, “Mr. Sulu, tie the science scanners in with the navigation computer. I want a time factor on that.”

  “Aye, sir,” the officer responded and turned with brisk attention to his console.

  Kirk remained standing at the science station, but he could see Sulu’s slim fingers dance across the double board. Scott followed suit, running a parallel check.

  Sulu suddenly let out a low whistle.

  “Problem?” Kirk asked.

  “Could be, sir. I’ll recheck,” Sulu replied.

  “Ye don’t have to,” Scott said. “My readout checks with yours.” His thick, blunt fingers pressed several switches and a spectrographic image of Kyros’ sun appeared on the forward visual monitor blanking out the image of the planet.

  Kirk looked at the picture and heard Scott mutter, ‘That dinna make sense.”

  “Explain,” Kirk ordered. He glanced back at the screen as Scott began to talk.

  “That radiation front shows a Doppler shift to the violet; a primary sign o’ a star gaein’ nova. But yon spectrograph shows Kyr as quiet an’ calm as a sleepin’ babe. It’s still a placid G5.”

  “Are there any novae or supernovae in this quadrant?” Kirk asked Helman.

  The science officer replied, frowning, “None detectable, sir. The only possible candidate is a blue Class B main sequence star about nine parsecs away, out of range of our longest range scanners. However, assuming it did blow thirty years ago, the front just reaching us now wouldn’t be much beyond point oh-oh-one because of the square of the distance and all.”

  “It has me worried, too, Commander,” Kirk said, noting the frown. “If we don’t know where it is, we can’t be sure of which direction to run in order to avoid it.”

  “To run, sir?” Uhura asked from the communications console.

  “It’s a possibility right now, Lieutenant,” Kirk said. He turned back to study the peaceful spectrograph still on the monitor. “All right, gentlemen, keep after it I want to know as much about that front as we can learn in the shortest possible time. If you haven’t licked it by the time Spock and the others beam up, I’ll detail him to help you.” Kirk’s voice took on a small note of worry. “If he’s feeling up to it”

  Uhura spoke up again, concern in her voice. “What’s wrong with Mr.. Spock?” Her deep respect for both the captain and the half-human first officer sometimes manifested itself in a maternal fashion.

  “He’s been feeling the effects of his implant a little more strongly than the others on the survey detail, though he’s assured me he can control it,” Kirk replied. “If he’s still acting as strangely as he did the night before last, I’ll have to order McCoy to remove it. It seems that Mr. Speck’s dop is giving him a real migraine.”

  “Dop?” Scott asked as he walked from the engineering console to the gap in the rail which ran around the inner edge of the upper deck. “What the divil is a dop?”

  “Dop is from an old German word—doppleganger—meaning the ghostly double of a living person. Ensign George made it up,” Kirk replied.

  He peered at the monitor screen a final time. “I’ll be in my quarters until the team is beamed up. Keep on that front and call me if there’s any change.” He turned to Scott. “Coming, Mr. Scott?”

  Once in his cabin. Kirk lay down on his bunk. Behind him, and built into the bulkhead, was a cabinet. Kirk reached back, rolling over onto his stomach as he did so. From a small shelf of real books, rather than microtapes, he took a dog-eared copy of Xenophon’s Anabasis. He flopped onto his back, opened the book, and began to read for the hundredth time that ancient Greek’s account of being trapped in hostile territory a thousand miles from home, and of the months of battles, marches, and countermarches until, at long last, the small army of mercenaries arrived safely home. Unstated in the matter-of-fact account, but apparent behind the scenes, was the loneliness of command, the agonizing decisions that tune and again had saved the isolated band from certain destruction. Kirk approved of Xenophon. Born a few millennia later, that worthy would have made a brilliant starship commander.

  The captain had just reached the point in the battle of Cunaxa where the Persian commander Cyrus was killed, when the intraship communicator bleeped.

  “Kirk here.”

  “Transporter Room One, Lieutenant Rogers, sir. Lieutenant Dawson requests permission to have Ensign George and Lieutenant Peters beamed up ahead of schedule. He says they’re both having dop trouble.”

  “What kind?”

  “The beggar Peters is linked with also picks pockets. Peters says that if he gets preoccupied and forgets to override his dop’s normal behavioral patterns, his hands keep sliding into other people’s pockets. He finds it so distracting that he can’t concentrate on his duties.”

  “And Ensign George?”

  “She can’t seem to keep her hands off men, sir—and vice versa.”

  Kirk sighed. Every time he decided to allow himself the luxury of spending a few hours with his nose in a book, something came along to spoil it.

  “Permission granted. Beam them up and tell them to report to Dr. McCoy. Are the rest of the party having any similar problems?”

  “Nothing they can’t handle, sir.”

  “How about Commander Spock?”

  “I don’t know, sir. He hasn’t reported in since he beamed down yesterday morning. That’s not like him.”

  “He’s probably on the trail of something ‘fascinating,’” Kirk said. “We’ll hear all about it when he beams up tonight. Kirk out.”

  He cut communication, looked longingly at his book, closed it reluctantly, and put it to one side. He switched on the intraship communicator again and called the sickbay.

  The voice that answered belonged to the ship’s chief medical officer, Dr. Leonard McCoy, the only member of the crew with whom the captain could associate on terms of human friendship rather than command.

  “Evening, Bones. We’ve got problems,” Kirk began.

  “Anything serious?” McCoy asked.

  “The dop links,” Kirk continued. “Drawing on a native’s brain for language and other behavior is great in theory, especially when the native isn’t aware of it. But too much is coming across in some cases. Two of

  Dawson’s party are having trouble controlling the dop input and he’s asked to have them beamed up early. I’ve given permission and told them to report to you, but I’d rather you put someone else on it and come up to my quarters. I’d like to discuss this whole thing.” />
  “Sure thing, Jim,” McCoy replied amiably. “I’ll have Mbenga handle it, he helped with the original surgery. I’ll also bring along a little something to help lubricate our thinking.”

  It was going to be a long evening. Kirk stripped, stepped into a shower cabinet set in one bulkhead, and set it for frigid needle spray. He gasped as the high pressure jets buffeted his taut, muscular body, massaging and cleansing at the same time. The water cut off abruptly and was replaced by a blast of hot air which dried him in seconds. He stepped out of the cabinet and pulled on a fresh uniform.

  “Good timing, Bones,” he said as his cabin door hissed open and McCoy stepped in. The doctor carried a peculiarly shaped flask of an amber-colored drink, Canopian brandy, Kirk’s favorite.

  He set the curved flask down on Kirk’s desk, took two snifter glasses from the wainscot cabinet which ran along the inner bulkhead, and filled each glass halfway. He handed one to Kirk, and the two stood silently for a moment, sipping the potent brandy slowly and appreciatively.

  McCoy’s seamed, leathery face peered at Kirk over the rim of the glass he held, his dark blue eyes fixed on his captain, waiting for him to speak.

  “Ahhh, lovely! Much better than that green Saurian stuff you like, eh, Bones?” Kirk said. He held out his glass. “A little more.”

  “I’m an equal opportunity drinker, Jim,” McCoy remarked. “Here you are.” The doctor refilled Kirk’s glass, then his own.

  The two men sat and began to discuss the malfunctioning of the telescan implants. McCoy frowned as Kirk described the reasons for the early return of two of the survey team members.

  McCoy let out a sudden, startled whistle when Kirk relayed Dawson’s report on Ensign George’s problem.

  “Sara did that?” he said incredulously. “Jim, she couldn’t have. She’s the starchiest female I’ve run into in years. I gave her a friendly pat one day and she almost took my head off. It’s a shame such a lovely woman should have such anachronistic beliefs about the human body.” McCoy shook his head, then asked Kirk, “Have you had much of a chance to talk with her?”