Read Online Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption by Vonda N. McIntyre - Free Book Online Page A

the description, articulating every word with care and precision, as if he were torturing himself, embracing the agony as a fitting punishment.
    “Khan!” Pavel cried. “Captain Kirk was only doing his duty! Listen to me, please—”
    “Indeed I will, Pavel Chekov, in a few moments you will speak to me as I wish.”
    Pavel felt himself being pushed forward in a travesty of a bow.
    He fought, but the guards forced him down. Khan let him look into his helmet, where the eel squirmed furiously.
    “Now you must meet my pet, Mister Chekov. You will find that it is not…quite…domesticated….”
    Khan slammed the helmet over Pavel’s head and locked it into its fastenings.
    The eel tumbled against Pavel’s face, lashing his cheek with its tail. In a panic, he clawed at his faceplate. Khan stood before him, watching, smiling. Pavel grabbed the helmet latches, but Khan’s people pulled his hands away and held him still.
    The eel, sensing the heat of a living body, ceased its frantic thrashing and began to crawl, probing purposefully with its sharp little snout. Pavel shook his head violently. The eel curled its body through his hair, anchoring itself, and continued its relentless search.
    It curved down behind his ear, slid beneath the lobe, and glided up again.
    It touched his eardrum.
    He heard the rush of blood, and its flowing warmth caressed his cheek.
    Then he felt the pain.
    He screamed.
     
    On board Reliant, Mister Kyle tried again and again to reach Terrell and Chekov. His voice was tight and strained.
    “ Reliant to Terrell, Reliant to Terrell, come in, Captain. Captain Terrell, please respond.”
    “For gods’ sake, Kyle, stop it,” Beach said.
    Kyle swung around on him. “Stoney, I can’t find them,” he said. “There’s no signal at all!” Several minutes had passed since the cry from Pavel Chekov. The sensor dials trembled in overload.
    “I know. Muster a landing party. Full arms. Alert the transporter room. I’m beaming down right now.” He headed for the turbo-lift.
    “Terrell to Reliant, Terrell to Reliant, come in, Reliant. ”
    Beach rushed back to the console.
    “ Reliant, Beach here. For gods’ sake, Clark, are you all right?”
    The pause seemed slightly longer than the signal lag required, but Beach dismissed it as his own concern and relief.
    “Everything’s fine, Commander, I’ll explain when I see you. We’re bringing several guests aboard. Prepare to beam up on my next signal.”
    “Guests? Clark, what—?”
    “Terrell out.”
    Beach looked at Kyle, who was frowning.
    “ ‘Guests’?” Kyle said.
    “Maybe we are transplanting something.”
     
    “ Enterprise Shuttle Seven, you’re cleared for liftoff.”
    “Roger, Seattle, we copy.” Commander Hikaru Sulu powered up the gravity fields, and the square little shuttlecraft rose smoothly from the vast expanse of the landing field.
    He glanced around to make sure his passengers were all safely strapped in: Admiral Kirk, Doctor McCoy, Commander Uhura. Almost like the old days. Kirk was reading a book—was that a pair of spectacles he was wearing? It was, indeed—McCoy was making notes in a medical file, and Uhura was bent over a pocket computer, intent on the program she was writing.
    Last night’s rain had left today crystal clear and gleaming. The shuttle gave a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of land so beautiful that Hikaru wanted to grab everyone in the shuttle and shake them till they looked: two ranges of mountains, the Cascades to the east and the Olympics to the west, gray and purple and glittering white; the long wide path of Puget Sound, leading north, studded with islands and sliced by the keen-edged wake of a hydrofoil. He rotated the shuttle one hundred eighty degrees to starboard, slowly, facing in turn the solitary volcanic peaks of Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, steaming and smoking again after a two-hundred-year sleep, Mount Hood, and far to the south, rising through towering