Seeking Genesis
In 2285, Kruge played a major role in a plot to obtain intelligence on the Genesis Device, a Federation technology designed to instantly terraform an entire planet. He saw it as an incredibly powerful weapon, and sought to bring that technology to the Empire. He recruited Valkris as a spy to obtain material from the project, and once successful, she made a rendezvous with Kruge on the Merchantman. When he learned from her that she had viewed the material even though she was not to have done so, he destroyed the vessel without beaming her aboard.
Kruge, now with the project summary in hand, ordered a course set for the Genesis Planet, which had only recently been formed. Arriving at that destination, he and his crew encountered the USS Grissom, a Federation science vessel assigned to study the planet. Kruge wanted to gain hostages with which to bargain for the Genesis technology, so he ordered his gunner to target the Grissom's engines in order to disable the vessel. However, in what the gunner described as a "lucky shot," the Grissom was destroyed. Kruge responded by instantly killing the gunner. After Torg found that a landing party from the Grissom had survived on the planet's surface, Kruge led a team to search for them.
Searching the surface
Shortly after beaming down to the surface of Genesis, Kruge and his officers had an encounter with some giant worms, one of which momentarily throttled Kruge until he bloodily squeezed the creature to death with his bare hands. He then contacted the Bird-of-Prey to report that their search had been uneventful.
Kruge and his companions eventually located the team they had been seeking, consisting of Starfleet officer Lieutenant Saavik, David Marcus – son of Admiral James T. Kirk – and a rejuvenated Captain Spock, whose body had been inadvertently revived by the effects of the Genesis Device. Taking the team as hostages, Kruge demanded to know the secret of Genesis, and refused to believe Saavik when she informed him that the technology was fundamentally flawed, and that the planet they were on was on the verge of destroying itself.
Encounter with the Enterprise
Upon the arrival of Admiral Kirk and the USS Enterprise, Kruge returned to his ship and attempted to ambush the Federation vessel. The Enterprise crew detected the Bird-of-Prey's cloaked approach and preemptively fired a pair of photon torpedoes at the now visible Klingon ship, causing the death of Kruge's monster dog. An enraged Kruge returned fire with a torpedo, expecting to be destroyed because the Federation craft outgunned him ten to one. He was meanwhile unaware that the Enterprise was crewed only by Kirk and a handful of bridge officers. Without its normal crew of hundreds, the Enterprise was effectively disabled when Kruge's torpedo knocked out its automation center. Kirk, bluffing, opened communications to demand Kruge's surrender.
Sensing that Kirk was hiding something, Kruge instead ordered Kirk's surrender, threatening to execute the prisoners as "enemies of galactic peace." As proof of his commitment, Kruge ordered his men on the surface to choose at random and kill one of the prisoners. One of Kruge's men moved to stab Saavik, but David immediately intervened, sacrificing his own life to save her. In response, Kirk deceived Kruge into believing that he was indeed surrendering, allowing a Klingon team aboard the Enterprise while he and his own crew surreptitiously set the ship's auto-destruct and beamed down to the planet.
The final confrontation
After the destruction of the Enterprise and the death of the bulk of Kruge's crew, Kirk contacted him from the surface, demanding to be beamed up. Kruge, however, chose to beam down himself to confront Kirk, allowing the rest of his crew to transport to the Bird-of-Prey.
Kruge then engaged in a fight with Kirk, amid the conflagration of the dying Genesis planet, but lost his footing as the ground gave way beneath him, leaving him clinging to the edge of a cliff. Kirk offered to pull Kruge up from the precipice he was hanging from, but instead of accepting Kirk's offer of mercy, he attempted to yank them both to their deaths. He failed, and was left dangling from Kirk's foot over an immense lava flow. Kirk then kicked him in the face three times, causing him to fall into the inferno to die. (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock)
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