Author: Ross

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging…

Khan chuckled at the voice from behind. A series of concentric rings rose from the controller, and he twisted the outer one as he turned. It descended back into the console. The undamaged side of his face twisted into a forced smile. There, at the emergency hatch, was Pike, phaser in hand, alongside the woman from before, his distant scion. “Pike…” he rasped. “Even now, still alive, my old friend.”

Pike was shaken for a moment at the sight of Khan’s ruined features. The burns. Even now, decades later, the childhood fear of burning alive still nibbled at him. “Still,” he managed. “Old friend.” He gestured at the bodies that littered the bridge. “You’ve managed to kill just about everybody else. But you just keep missing the target.”

Khan launched himself at Pike. Despite age and injury, he was incredibly fast. Both Pike and La’an fired their phasers. Pike’s shot clipped Khan’s shoulder; La’an’s caught him square in the chest, but Khan gave no sign of noticing either. He crossed the bridge in three mighty bounds and had his hand on Pike’s phaser before the admiral could get off a second shot. Pike’s phaser crumpled in Khan’s grip and he wrestled Pike to the ground. Pike had been no match for Khan in unarmed combat twenty years ago, and even Khan’s injuries weren’t enough to even the odds.

La’an was reluctant to risk shooting again at close range, especially if she had to set her phaser to kill. The point was rendered moot when Khan surprised her with a back-kick from the ground that knocked the phaser from her hand. She retaliated with a roundhouse of her own, displacing Khan long enough for Pike to get back on his feet.

Khan landed near the middle of the bridge. Rather than immediately return to the fray, he sprang back toward the Genesis controller. He had turned the second ring before Pike and La’an closed the distance to him. “Give it up, Khan,” Pike demanded.

“I am formed free,” Khan spat, “And free I must remain.” Pike doubled over at a blow to his midsection. La’an caught Khan with a strike to the side of his head. Khan toppled sideways. He tried to catch himself on the railing, but his missing fingers make his hands clumsy. He hit the deck hard and rolled to one side just fast enough to avoid La’an’s boot.

He was back on his feet a second later. Khan had been a skilled fighter once, but his body was too badly mangled for anything but brute strength now. La’an was fast and her skills were sharper, but Khan’s size gave him an advantage if he could bring raw power to bear. He anticipated her left hook, twisting around it and delivering an open-handed strike to her chest that sent La’an flying. He twisted the third ring on the control unit.

Despite having the wind knocked out of him, Pike was moving again. He landed a two-fisted blow to Khan’s back, and followed up with the same to his chest when Khan straightened. Pike knew the punches wouldn’t cause Khan any significant pain or injury, but he could at least ruin his balance. Khan backhanded him into the captain’s chair. He grabbed the center cylinder that still protruded from the Genesis controller.

“Hold it right there!” All three of the combatants paused a moment in surprise. Una stood, slightly unsteady, at the bridge’s emergency exit hatch. One side of her head was caked with blood and she was holding a broken pipe like a club.

“Una!” Khan said. “Kill them. Kill them and you will have your freedom.”

“Number one,” Pike said, quietly, pleading.

Una looked from Pike to Khan and back. “I’m sorry Chris,” she said. La’an tensed, ready to jump. Una took one step toward Pike, then quickly sent the pipe spinning from her hand. It caught Khan’s hand with enough force to break bones, forcing him away from the Genesis console.

“I’m sorry, Chris,” Una said again. “I couldn’t do anything sooner.”

Khan howled with pain and stepped toward Una, throwing a clumsy overhand punch that treated his ruined hand like a cudgel. She sidestepped so quickly Pike’s eyes could barely keep up, and Khan punched only air. She countered with an attempt at an uppercut, which Khan interrupted with his elbow.

The two augments fought fiercely. As he had with La’an, Khan tried to use brute force to overwhelm Una’s superior skill. But Una was both faster and stronger than any human. He could see the injury behind her ear and tried to target it, but Una was careful to protect her right side. Khan spun in response to a quick kick to his side. He stumbled, catching himself on a fragment of the ceiling that had been torn free during the battle. He picked it up and swung around fast, hoping to outpace Una’s reflexes.

She jumped backwards, but not far enough. The sharp edge of the metal sliced her leg and she fell. La’an dashed to her side, and Khan backhanded her into the tactical console. La’an gasped sharply and looked down. The jagged end of some debris had pierced her abdomen.

Khan took advantage of the sudden distraction to make for the Genesis console. Pike was caught with indecision for a fraction of a second, but made for Khan. Too late. The cylinder retracted into the device and a digital display started to count down from 280.

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging

No one was there to challenge Pike and La’an as they materialized in Reliant’s transporter room. La’an checked her tricorder while Pike covered the door with his phaser.

“Energy fluctuations all over the ship, Admiral,” she said. “It’s making it difficult to isolate life signs.”

Pike looked at the other transporter pad. “This is Genesis,” he said, indicating the torpedo. They both moved to the transporter controls.

“Pike to Enterprise,” he said into his communicator. “We’ve located the Genesis warhead. Beaming it over now.” The device vanished in blue energy.

“We still need the control unit,” La’an said. “Without it, it’s not much more than a very extravagant bomb.”

“Can you locate it?”

She shook her head. “The sensor signature Doctor Marcus gave us is too faint to locate from here, but I think we have to assume Khan would have taken it to the bridge.”

“Let’s get up there,” Pike said.

---

Una shook herself back to consciousness. The railing on the gantry past the warp core was deformed where she had grabbed it to prevent herself from being thrown. Her left arm didn’t want to move. Dislocated. She reached across her chest and popped the joint back in.

She checked the control panel. Someone had started to redirect power back to weapons before the last salvo. Just redirecting again wasn’t going to be enough, and openly defying Khan at this point was still dangerous. There was only one thing she could think of. She initiated a hot restart of the warp core. She had bypassed the main energizer enough to restore power flow, so the engines would start up, even though the ship was by now damaged badly enough that it wouldn’t be able to maintain a stable warp field for long. But the restart sequence would siphon off almost all available power for about six minutes; it wouldn’t be possible to charge the phasers until then.

The two augments on the deck below hadn’t been fast enough when she ship had pitched. It was possible they were still alive, but what mattered was that they were unconscious.

She grabbed the medical kit and set the hypospray for the most powerful painkiller it contained. The pain of relocating her shoulder was nothing compared to what would come next. The tricorder was no help; whatever the parasite was made of, it didn’t register on scans. Una set aside the laser scalpel in favor of a crude metal one; she would need tactile feedback for this.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on her body, her sense of self. She had been suppressing her body’s natural self-healing. It wasn’t equipped to handle a parasite capable of complex responses to external stimuli. She allowed her immune system to work its magic now, and as she had predicted, the creature inside her thrashed in response. The world went blurry and even with the painkillers, Una had to fight the urge to retch. As she knew it would, the creature moved under her skin. She visualized the web of nerves and blood vessels in her skull. Picked the safest place. Imagined the shape of the Ceti Eel, and saw a straight line path to where its head would be that avoided the posterior auricular vein. She couldn’t quite keep her hand steady, but it would have to be enough. She stabbed upward, just behind the ear.

Something went away inside her, a cluster of neurons crushed by the death-throes of the creature. She couldn’t even remember what it was she had lost. But the pain eased. She fumbled for the autosuture. She lacked the medical skill to close the wound properly, much less while working blind, disoriented, suffering from brain trauma and heavily dosed on painkillers, but she hoped her concentration would last long enough to staunch the bleeding.

---

“Awake!” Khan told himself. “Arise or be forever fallen.” Half his face had burned to the console. He pulled himself up with a shaking hand. His left hand, the hand that had been his “good” one, had been burned as well. Two fingers had been blown off in the explosion.

A voice issued from the tannoy. “Enterprise to Reliant. You are ordered to surrender your vessel, respond.” Khan dimly recognized the voice from all those years ago. The Kenyan woman, Uhura. He recalled her as a strong and noble woman, and the tiniest part of him was surprised she would still be in a subservient position beside Pike so many years later. But he had little time for such reflections. Only his enhanced physiology had kept him from succumbing to shock, and even that would not protect him forever.

“No, Pike,” he said, wryly. “The game’s not over.” He limped to the side of the bridge, where the Genesis control unit stood, and pressed the button on its side that caused it to unfold.

“It is over, Khan. Move away from the controller.”

So, I had this idea of a different climax, but I couldn’t get over the fact that in the canon, Enterprise needs to Warp Speed it out of there to avoid the genesis wave, and I felt like that precluded an alternate version where Reliant is destroyed over an inhabited planet. Oh well. Still got a few twists ahead before the disproportionately long epilogue.

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging…

“Engineering, report!” Pike shouted.

“Admiral,” came a panting reply, “I’ve got to take the mains off-line. The radiation…”

Kirk and McCoy exchanged a look as the voice trailed off. Kirk looked to Pike for confirmation. The admiral gave a quick nod. “Go,” Kirk said. McCoy grabbed his medical bag and headed for the lift.

“Where the hell are they?” Pike asked. “Xon?”

“Sporadic energy readings portside, aft,” Xon said. “Could be an impulse turn?”

“What do you think, Jim?” Pike said. “He’ll be back, but from where?”

Jim studied the static on the screen. “Without sensors, he’ll be relying on his tactical expertise. From what I’ve heard, he’s an absolutely brilliant tactician, so what’s the smartest thing for him to do?”

La’an turned her seat to face them. “Expertise,” she said, realizing something. “But not experience. He’s studied the theory, but he’s still working from a twentieth-century mindset.” She turned back to her console and replaced the static-filled view of the nebula on the main viewscreen with a map, centered on the Enterprise. A blue line traced its path, while a red one connected the places where they’d seen Reliant. Touching a few more buttons, La’an had the computer guess more points along the path.

“A fractal search pattern based on multimodal reflection sorting,” Xon observed. He raised an eyebrow. “The ideal approach to maximize the probability of finding us before we find him. Calculating the optimal search pattern without sensor assistance would be impossible for a normal human.”

“But there’s a flaw in his logic,” La’an said. “He’s brilliant, but not experienced.” She touched her control panel and the image rotated, showing that Reliant’s path formed a flat disc.

“Two-dimensional thinking,” Kirk realized.

Pike nodded. “My flight school instructor always used to say you can only look in one direction at a time, but the rest of them are still there. He meant that you needed to rely on your instruments, but here… Sulu, full stop. Z-minus ten thousand meters. La’an, stand by photon torpedoes.”

The Enterprise dropped down into the clouds. “Xon, can you predict his search path?”

Xon raised an eyebrow. “Admiral,” he said, tentatively, “I regret to report that an accurate calculation based on the available data is beyond my capability.”

“Best guess. Switch main viewscreen to dorsail camera. Look sharp.”

On Reliant, Khan silently studied the viewscreen. There were plenty of places for Enterprise to hide, but as he ordered the ship to yaw to starboard, he imagined his field of vision on the viewscreen as a searchlight, sweeping out an arc on his mental map of the nebula. They would complete this pass, turn, and pass again, fencing Pike in. “So much nearer the danger; go and speed,” he reflected. “Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain.”

It felt like an eternity before the underside of the Reliant flickered on the viewscreen. Pike gave a quick nod to Sulu. The Enterprise rose up through the nebula. The bridge fell into a tense silence as the Enterprise silently pulled up behind Reliant. “Fire,” Pike ordered.

A red ball issued from Enterprise’s remaining torpedo tube. Reliant wouldn’t have had time to react even if had seen Enterprise approach. The torpedo tore through Reliant’s own torpedo launcher, and the pylon supporting it away from the hull crumpled. Enterprise followed on with a burst of phaser-fire to the port nacelle, striking up internal explosions.

The bridge around Khan became an inferno. More supports collapsed, sparking wires dropped in piles as consoles burned. He pushed a body out of the helmsman’s seat and tried to fire phasers. Reliant was dying, but surely he could take Pike to Hell with him. Nothing happened. “Weapons!” he demanded, but as his gaze swept across the bridge, it became clear he was the only one left standing. “Una!” he barked into his communicator, “Weapons!”

“I’ve diverted all weapons power to life support,” crackled the response. “The game’s over, Khan; you’ve still got a handful of people here you can save.”

“No!” Khan shouted. “Rather than be less, I care not to be at- he was cut off when one final torpedo took the port nacelle clean off. The ship listed hard and Khan fell into the fire of an exploding panel.

---

“One more shot will finish them,” Kirk said.

“We still have our orders,” Pike said. He locked eyes with La’an, looking for… Permission?

“And Una, sir?” she asked.

Instead of answering directly, he turned. “Nyota, send to commander, Reliant. Prepare to be boarded.”

“I’ll go,” Kirk said. “I lost Genesis, I’ll get it back. For Sam.”

Pike stood, just a bit shaky. “No, Jim. This is my mess. I should have stopped Khan twenty years ago. If things go south, get my ship out of here.”

La’an stood. “I’m going with you, Admiral. Frankly, you’re no match for Khan on your own.”

Pike considered it for a second. “No heroics. We’re there to recover Genesis and any survivors willing to be taken into custody. He stepped aside, looked to Kirk and indicated the Captain’s seat. “You have the conn.”

 

Previously, on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging…

Kirk indicated the maelstrom on the screen as he and Pike stepped from the turbolift. “Mutara nebula,” he explained. “Gave us a rough ride on the way here.”

“High energy static discharge,” Saavik explained. “Sensors won’t work, shields will be useless.”

“A fair fight,” Pike said.

“A fair fight with Khan,” La’an said. “Still long odds.”

“Mister Xon, Any sign of Reliant?” Pike asked.

“Sensor range remains limited,” Xon said. “I can not fix their location, but the lack of a warp signature suggests they have not yet restored engines.”

“Mister Sulu, set course into the nebula. Nyota, give me an open channel.”

“Aye sir. You’re on.”

Pike stepped to the center of the bridge, but didn’t take his seat. “Khan, this is Pike. I’m still willing to negotiate. I have warp, you don’t. If you try to run, Starfleet will hunt you to the end of the galaxy. I tried to give you a chance, twenty years ago. I’m willing to do it again. This doesn’t have to end in bloodshed. Hand over Genesis, and I’ll report that Reliant was destroyed. No one will come looking for you. You have my word.” Pike signaled for Uhura to close the channel.

Kirk gave Pike a concerned look. “If he agrees, do you really plan to let him go?”

Pike gestured Kirk closer so they could speak privately. “We have priority orders from Starfleet to recover Genesis,” he said. Slowly, pointedly, he said, “Regardless of Khan’s response, the ship’s log will reflect that we made every reasonable attempt to carry out those orders.”

They both looked to Saavik. “By the book,” Kirk said, wryly.

---

Una measured every syllable of Pike’s message. What game was he playing?

“Triangulate that signal,” Khan demanded. “Find them.”

“My lord,” Joachim protested. “We will have warp in an hour. We could be at Earth in two.”

Khan scoffed. “Princes, potentates, warriors, the flower of heaven once yours, now lost… Have you chosen this place after the toil of battle to repose, to slumber here as in the vales of heaven? I want him found.” He looked to Una. “A ruse, of course,” he said. “But what kind?”

“Pike will abide by his word,” Una said, cautiously. “But, of course, he knows you can’t accept his terms. He wants you to think help is on the way. He’s hoping you’ll run, give him time to escape.”

“We have him, lord,” Joachim said. The screen showed the Enterprise limping toward the nebula. “Their warp signature is intermittent.”

“There he is,” Khan sighed with satisfaction. “More wounded than we were led to believe. Accursed, and in a cursed hour he hies.”

“If he puts the nebula between us and them, we will not be able to jam their subspace transmissions,” Joachim explained.

“Close to firing range and explain our displeasure,” Khan ordered.

Moments later, a pair of bright phaser bursts narrowly missed the Enterprise’s port nacelle pylon. The larger ship continued unimpeded.

“Why are we slowing?” Khan demanded.

“We can’t follow them into the nebula, my lord. Shields will be useless there.”

Pike’s voice crackled on the open channel. “This is Admiral Pike. What’s the matter, Khan? We’ve come this far. Khan… I’m laughing at the superior intellect.”

“Full impulse power!” Khan demanded.

“No, sir,” Joachim said, desperately, “You have Genesis. You can have anything you-”

He stopped short as Khan grabbed and shook the younger man. “Full power! Damn you!” he shoved him aside and touched the engine controls himself.

---

“I’ll say this for him, he’s consistent,” Kirk observed as the Reilant surged forward. “Now entering the Mutara nebula.” A tremor struck the Enterprise bridge and the lights went out.

“Emergency lights,” Pike ordered. Red light bathed the bridge. “La’an, best guess; fire when ready.”

---

“Tactical?” Khan asked.

“Inoperative,” Joachim answered.

“Raise shields.”

“As I feared, sir, non-functional. I’m reducing speed.”

Khan started to say something, but held back. He turned to Una. “How long until we have warp power?”

“Still a while,” she said. “You just don’t have enough people for all the work.”

A pair of phaser bolts appeared through the flickering static on Reliant’s viewscreen. They has missed the ship from behind, but the ionization of nebular matter nearby still sent a tremble through the ship.

“Aft torpedoes, fire!” Khan shouted. The torpedo disappeared into the clouds.

---

Reliant again vanished into cloud and static. “Hold course,” Pike ordered. “He’s close.” The bridge fell into an uneasy silence as they squinted at the screen. Kirk moved to Xon’s side, studying the mostly-indecipherable noise on the sensor display. La’an checked the phaser banks. “Sir!” Sulu exclaimed, indicating the screen. Reliant appeared through a break in the static, heading straight toward them.

“Evasive to starboard!” Pike ordered. “Fire!” The Enterprise rolled counterclockwise fast enough that the bridge crew swayed from centripetal motion. A salvo of phaser-fire tore through the side of the port torpedo launcher. Enterprise fired back, a series of red bolts from the underside of the saucer. Two caught the starboard edge of Reliant’s bridge dome.

An explosion blew out the turbolift doors. Even Khan was knocked from his feet. His navigator was thrown over the console and Joachim tumbled over the railing toward the captain’s chair. Khan saw the structural support break free, but he was too far away. It hit the deck, then toppled to the side, on top of Joachim. Khan lifted the heavy metal fragment and tossed it aside. “Joachim?” he asked. The younger man’s shirt was quickly soaking through where the sharp edge had pierced him.

“Yours…” Joachim managed, “Is superior.” His eyes went wide.

Khan shook him gently, then cradled him in his arms. “I shall avenge you,” he promised, then rose to his feet. He pointed an angry finger at Una, who had just managed to get back to her fee. “You! To engineering. I want main power, now!”

Her voice remained calm. “As you wish, my lord.” She headed for the emergency hatch, calculating how many things Khan was likely to keep track of at once under the circumstances. On her way by, she pulled the first aid kit off the wall. He didn’t notice.

(Part 12 will be delayed a week to make room for something seasonal. Also, I have one more plot point I want to introduce and I’m hoping a delay will give me time to figure out how to do it.)

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging…

M’Benga entered the observation deck and dropped into a chair, exhausted. “Commander Ortegas is stable,” he said, directing a pointed look at Kirk and McCoy. “We weren’t fully stocked when we set out and a lot of our equipment was damaged in the battle. Fortunately, Christine happens to be an expert in archaeological medicine. She was able to evacuate the subdural hematoma.”

“Like something out of the dark ages,” McCoy said, wryly, “But it worked.” He shook his head guiltily. “There might be some permanent impairment. We won’t know until we get her back to Starfleet Medical for a full exam.”

Jim Kirk’s attention shifted to the frantic repairs to the warp core below. “It’s bad, Captain,” La’an explained. “Shield control is completely destroyed. One torpedo tube, but the loading mechanism is inoperable. We have partial main power, but damage to the plasma cooling systems means we can only maintain warp for a few seconds at a time.”

“The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,” Pike said, grimly. “Reliant is still jamming subspace communications. Without it, we have no way to warn Starfleet. With Reliant’s access codes and Una’s expertise, they could make it all the way to Earth. And with Genesis…”

“I should have seen it,” Kirk said, angrily. “I got caught with my britches down. I must be getting senile.”

“Jim, you couldn’t have guessed-” McCoy tried to comfort him.

Kirk pushed him away. “I was brash. I was impulsive. If I’d left Genesis back on Regula…”

“He would’ve found another way,” Pike said. “This isn’t your fault. La’an, you’re the closest thing we have to an expert on Khan.” With a deep sigh, he added, “And on Una. There has to be some way to stop them. We have a little time while they fix their engines, but not much.”

La’an considered this. “Admiral… I’m finding it hard to believe Una would side with Khan. Even after…”

“It would be illogical for Lieutenant Commander Chin-Riley to resist,” Xon said. “Khan would simply dispose of her. She is already a convicted criminal under Federation law; her most rational course of action would be to ally with Khan, at least until an opportunity to escape to neutral space presents itself.”

“I agree with La’an,” Pike said. “Una wouldn’t betray us.”

“She may not have had a choice,” Jim said. “Those parasites Khan used on Terrell and Ortegas.”

“If that’s true, her Ilyrian physiology might give her some limited resistance,” M’Benga said.

Kirk nodded. “Khan might not have known about Reliant’s prefix code, but Commander Chin-Riley would have. She didn’t warn him.”

“So we can’t trust Una, but neither can Khan,” Pike concluded.

“He’s used to inspiring absolute, unwavering loyalty,” La’an said. “Now that she’s proven herself, it won’t occur to him to question her.”

“Which means that if we give her an opening, she might be able to take him by surprise,” Kirk said.

“Khan is brilliant,” La’an said. “But he’s also obsessive. Single-minded. On Earth, he was brought down by a sort of Trojan Horse. There was one particular geneticist, Khan believed he needed him to create new augments. The international coalition used him as bait to draw Khan out.”

“Bait,” Pike said. “Me. He wants me.”

Kirk nodded. “He was close to finding Genesis on Regula, but he dropped it to set a trap for you.”

“So what do we do, stand on a corner and shout ‘Yoo hoo!’?” McCoy asked.

“That’s exactly what we do,” Pike said. “Right now, he doesn’t know where we are. Whatever move he’s planning, he’s hoping to draw us out. Bring us to him. Bring me to him.”

“So we flip the script,” Kirk said. “Bring him to us.”

“We’re sending out invitations to our own funeral, now?” McCoy said with growing incredulity.

“Doctor McCoy is right,” La’an said. “In our present state, we’re no match for Reliant.”

“Maybe there’s a way to even the odds,” Kirk said.

As the others started to file out, Saavik paused. “Captain Kirk,” she said, “May I ask you a question?”

“What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?”

“Sir…” she was reluctant. “Your brother mentioned the Kobayashi Maru.”

Pike also stopped. “Are you asking if we’re playing out that scenario now?”

“Do you mind telling me what you did, sir? I’d like to know.”

La’an and McCoy exchanged a look. She rolled her eyes. It was McCoy who spoke. “Lieutenant, you are looking at the only Starfleet cadet who ever beat the no-win scenario.”

Saavik was confused. “But how?”

Kirk smiled, painfully. It was Pike who spoke. “He cheated.”

“I reprogrammed the parameters of the scenario. Made it possible to rescue the ship,” Kirk admitted.

“The academic tribunal was divided on whether to expel you or give you a commendation for original thinking,” Pike said.

“Six to three,” Kirk said. “It wasn’t that close.”

“Then you never faced that situation, faced death?” Saavik asked.

He looked out the observation window, wryly. He seemed about to say something, but Pike cut him off. “Captain Kirk doesn’t accept the premise of the no-win scenario. Battle stations, Mister Saavik. Jim, walk with me?”

He let the younger captain around the longer route to the secondary companionway. “Sam was a friend,” Pike said. “I won’t pretend it’s the same for me as it was for you.”

“Saavik was right,” Kirk said. “I’ve never faced death. Not like this. I’ve cheated death, talked my way out of it, but I’ve never looked it in the face.”

“This isn’t your fault, Jim,” Pike said. “It’s mine. I hesitated.”

“You didn’t want to assume an attack posture against a Starfleet ship,” Kirk said. “I might have done the same thing myself.”

“Not just now,” Pike said. “I hesitated now, and I hesitated twenty years ago. I knew what my duty was with Khan, but after what happened with Una, I wanted to believe there was a better way. That’s what I do, Jim. I… obsess, over the possibilities. I’m not like you. You don’t hesitate.”

“I did once,” Kirk said. “My first tour, back on Farragut. I… I won’t go into it. But I froze. Just for a second. And people died. Ever since then, I’ve been determined to only regret the things I’ve done, not the things I haven’t.”

“You and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, but I admire your… clarity,” Pike said. “We’re about to go into battle with half a ship against one of the greatest tactical minds of human history. I need a Number One who can back me up, someone I can trust to act in the moment, without hesitation. I need a Number One who doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario.”

Jim stiffened. “Aye aye, Admiral.”