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controls.
    [23]Kirk’s gaze stayed fixed on the fresh, verdant spot in the dome below them. With the Enterprise still shielded against a possible Klingon attack, there was only one escape route available to them: the one part of the dome still unprotected by a force field. “Straight ahead,” he ordered Lerner. “Right through that big green doorway.”
    This should work,he thought, provided the colonists don’t repair the shield in the next ten seconds.
    And as long as the shuttle’s transporters were working better than the gravity or the deflectors.
    “Five seconds to structural collapse,” the computer informed them helpfully.
    “Locking on,” Lerner reported. “Transporting ... now!”
    As the familiar static tingle of the transporter beams swept over him, Kirk considered the weak spot in the colony’s force field; in a way it was not unlike another dangerous wound in a planet’s defenses: the gaping hole in Earth’s ozone layer that Khan Noonien Singh first discovered back in the 1980s.
    The hole Khan later turned to his own advantage. ...

CHAPTER ONE
MUROROA ATOLL
    TUAMOTO ISLANDS
    FRENCH POLYNESIA
    JUNE 14, 1992

    ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FEETabove the concrete launch pad, Roberta Lincoln crawled out onto one of the horizontal swing arms of the towering rocket gantry. A small green gecko scurried out of her way as the fortyish American woman clambered on her hands and knees across the steel bridge toward her target: an Ariane rocket primed for takeoff.
    The more things change, the more they really do stay the same,Roberta thought wryly Twenty-five years ago, her longtime friend and supervisor, Gary Seven, had crept across a similar elevated platform to sabotage another rocket launch. His mission then had been to prevent a weapon of mass destruction from being launched into orbit, initiating a full-scale outer space arms race. A quarter century later, Roberta’s agenda[26]was pretty much the same. The only difference is that this time I’m the one performing without a net.
    Just to play it safe, however, she clipped one end of a safety cord to the metal grating beneath her, keeping the other end securely attached to her belt. A cool, dry wind rustled her honey-blond hair as she came within reach of the powerful European booster rocket, designed to place commercial satellites in orbit high above the Earth. Roberta briefly wondered what kind of bribes and/or extortion Khan had employed to get his hands on the Ariane, let alone transport it to this remote launch site in the South Pacific, previously occupied by the French government’s now-defunct nuclear testing program.
    From her lofty perch upon the gantry, Roberta could look out over the entire atoll: a circular ring of greenery surrounding a large moonlit lagoon. Leafy palm trees and mangroves covered much of the island, although she could also spot the lights of the-Mission Control center, nestled amidst the lush tropical flora.
    “Let’s just hope they don’t spot me,” she whispered to herself, acutely aware that her green camouflage shorts and tank top, which had blended perfectly with the tropical shrubbery on her way here, now clashed alarmingly with the industrial-red paint job on the rocket gantry. According to their most recent intel, Khan himself intended to be present for this launch, and Roberta sincerely hoped to get in and out of Muroroa without actually running into the man himself.
    The last thing I need right now is a reunion with that smug, so-called superman,she thought. She and Seven[27]had their hands full these days, coping with the crisis in Bosnia, not to mention all the other international mischief stirred up by Khan and his genetically engineered siblings. In their eagerness to assert their self-proclaimed destinies as rulers of the Earth, the Children of Chrysalis, as Roberta still thought of them, had sparked civil wars and unrest all over the globe, in Eastern Europe, Liberia, Somalia, Peru, and elsewhere. This had not