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Enterprise Asides Part 2 - The Doomed
Captain Clark Terrell had never killed anyone in his life. He had even expressed dismay that the Reliant, a science vessel assigned to work in tandem with Project Genesis, had been outfitted with weapons, but several admirals, speaking to him as though he was a fresh-faced ensign, had assured him that his ship would need to defend itself.
The Genesis assignment was exactly the kind of mission he had craved, however: exploration in service of scientific research. Doctor Carol Marcus’ ideas were brilliant, and Terrell greatly admired her commitment to preserving life at all costs, even if it meant stretching his mission out for months at a time.
And then he had found Ceti Alpha V.
And then he had found Khan.
The man’s voice rattled inside his head, a malevolent spectre pushing him farther and farther down a bleak hole where his own thoughts died at the source, stewing in a soup of dead conscience and stagnant remorse. He was powerless, his actions those of Khan. The word “master” floated up somewhere behind his eyes and he wished he could weep. He wished he could fight back and turn his thoughts back on the one who controlled him, forcing Khan to endure the helplessness he felt.
He was a man of science, a man of wonder, a wide-eyed child in the face of the beauty of the galaxy, the distant quadrants the Federation could only dream of visiting, the promises of new whole realities between atoms and through the eyes of others. He desperately wanted to return to that life, the freedom of it. He wanted to hear Commander Kyle reigning him in while his first officer, Chekov, so eager to prove himself in a command role, encouraged Terrell to greater and greater risks in the name of science.
Instead, he was here, surrounded by Chekov’s friends, and the scientists Terrell had so greatly respected, a wolf among sheep, a pawn, a . . . a slave. His stomach roiled at the thought. Khan’s devotion to twentieth century ugliness spread nothing but pain to those around him, corrupting the future the Federation worked so hard to maintain like a spreading ink stain on a silk shirt. Brutal ambition, the need to subjugate those he considered lesser, childish greed, Khan was not a force to be reasoned with nor redeemed, and that thought made Terrell feel even worse, living proof that his own belief in the goodness of sentient nature was wrong, proof that someone could be so beyond the normal boundaries of society that they would actually seek out pain and destruction.
So many had died already. The other scientists who had been unable to escape Regula I, left behind as bloody trophies for Admiral Kirk to find were bright, kind, talented people, devoting everything to making the galaxy a better place, furthering the limits of discovery beyond what anyone thought possible. Terrell fought it, but that terrible compulsion to hurt welled within him, urged on by the terrible voice of the man at the other end. He hoped Kirk couldn’t see him sweat.
He exchanged a look with Chekov and his first officer gave a grey-faced nod, his young eyes burdened with a profound sadness. Terrell returned the nod as subtly as he could, as though a great string running up from the top of his head were operating his muscles, and he a limp puppet.
But then, suddenly, two men appeared from out of nowhere. Terrell recognized one as David Marcus, son of the project leader, but the other’s name escaped him in the moment.
“Phasers down!” the first ordered while Marcus went barrelling straight toward Admiral Kirk. The younger man was fast, but the Admiral knocked the wind out of his attacker, moving with the efficiency of one who was used to being on the defensive, disabling but never hurting. Chekov frequently shared tales of his former captain, and it seemed like every other one involved fisticuffs and ripped uniforms. The memory made Terrell want to weep. If only his current situation could be resolved with a few punches and an earnest plea for peace.
“Where’s Doctor Marcus?” Kirk demanded.
“I’m Doctor Marcus,” the young man groaned, holding his stomach.
“Jim!” Carol Marcus shouted, rushing into the room.
Her arrival diffused the chaotic energy of the situation almost immediately. Terrell admired Doctor Marcus’ ability to get right to the heart of any matter with no pretense or meandering. She was a brilliant scientist, and Terrell knew he should be absolutely intimidated by her, but they frequently got along well, even when she was cutting through his hopeful optimism with cold steel-edged facts.
Kirk asked Marcus something Terrell couldn’t hear, but he didn’t much care at this point. The compulsion was spreading through his mind, cold and unfeeling. It was time to play his hand. If he could have chopped off his own hand to prevent it, he would have.
“Mother,” David insisted, his voice bitter and angry, “he killed everybody we left behind.”
Without missing a beat, Carol Marcus said, “Oh, of course he didn’t.” Her voice was sad, but calm and rational. “David, you’re just making this harder.”
Terrell raised his phaser, hating the cold brutal voice inside his head. “I’m afraid it’s even harder than you think, Doctor.” His voice sounded hollow, unnatural. “Please . . . don’t move.”
Everyone froze, eyes widening.
“Chekov!” Kirk shouted in astonishment as Terrell’s first officer and fellow puppet raised his phaser.
“I’m sorry, Admiral,” he said, sounding so much like a scared boy, too young to comprehend what the monster who orbited above them was doing to them. Terrell’s rage burned within him, but it amounted to little more than a glow of embers at the bottom of a black well crawling with segmented Ceti eels.
Terrell raised his wrist communicator and, in a dead voice, said, “Your Excellency, have you been listening?”
Your Excellency, Terrell thought, with disgust, wishing he could infuse the disingenuous moniker with any amount of hurtful sarcasm, but Khan would never pick up on it.
“I have indeed, Captain,” Khan’s voice came through the communicator, arrogant and cruel. “You have done well.”
David Marcus, suddenly rushed at Kirk again. “I knew it, you son of a bitch!”
The compulsion to fire came on so suddenly, Terrell hardly blinked. But instead of Kirk, the blast caught the other scientist, vaporizing him in a rush of screaming energy.
And so, he was a murderer, now. No, not a murderer, he fought back, a weapon, swung with blunt force by a madman at a group of innocents.
And yet, he thought, a weapon that could fight back.
“Don’t move,” Terrell said, his voice shaking. “Anybody.” He had to fight back. He would not give into Khan’s hold on his mind. It made him sick that it had taken a senseless death to wake him up to the possibility. It was like swimming up from the bottom of a tar-filled pool, breath trapped in his lungs forever, the end inevitable. He reached and reached until he found a small mote of independence. He could do this.
“Captain,” came Khan’s voice, “we’re waiting. What’s the delay?”
Terrell’s head felt as though it was shattering from the inside. But he continued to fight the influence of the creature inside his brain. “All is well, sir. You have the coordinates to beam up Genesis.” It wasn’t much, but at least he could save the survivors from any needless death.
“First things first, Captain,” came Khan’s exasperated reply and Terrell’s blood ran cold. “Kill Admiral Kirk.”
The creature in his brain pulsed and Terrell fought back against it with everything he had, every shred of faith and belief in the goodness of humanity he had left, scraps to be sure, but they gave him at least a small amount of ammunition to resist the terrible compulsion to kill. “Sir, it is difficult,” he said, feeling his brittle defenses crumbling, “I try to obey, but . . .”
“Kill him.” The order echoed again and again in Terrell’s brain, pulsing in time with the foreign creature living within.
Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.
“I . . .” Terrell sobbed, fighting. He would not do it. He would not kill. He was Clark Terrell, a good man, a believer in discovery and wonder. He would not serve this brutal monster.
“Kill him, Terrell! Now!”
His defenses slipped all at once and he found himself pointing the phaser directly at Kirk, but then he reached up out of the bleak emptiness of his own captivity and turned the phaser away from Kirk. The compulsion to pull the trigger kept moving forward and forward until he could not escape it, but by then, he had pulled the phaser toward himself, where it couldn’t hurt anybody else.
He was not going to hurt another soul.
Khan was not going to win. He was going to fail. And even though Terrell knew he wasn’t going to see it, he knew he had done all he could.
He pulled the trigger.