[Star Trek TNG] - Double Helix Omnibus

by Peter David

  “I saw where he went. Right into the snow crest on the sun-side of mountain on the starboard beam. Permission to break formation and effect search.”

  “Negative. Maintain formation.”

  Spock’s voice. Stiles clung to the low steady tone. It was the last thing he heard as his craft smashed into a snowy crevasse, as if the boot of a giant had scuffed a sandcastle. As the Frog plowed through fresh snow at flight speed, the impact knocked Stiles roughly left and right, held in place by the straps he almost hadn’t bothered putting on. He saw only a spray of white pitted with rocks as the Frog’s nose drove itself into the mountainside. The din of contact with mountainous matter and hard-packed snow muffled his helpless shouts and gasps. He crammed his eyes closed and waited to die. Pain raced up his left arm so hard, so sharp that he tried to turn away from it. His left arm tingled, went numb. Had it been cut off?

  And suddenly, sharply, like a flat stone dropping, there was silence.

  No…not quite. He could still hear the skitter of bits of ice and rock settling outside. He opened his eyes.

  Nearly dark…the Frog was completely buried in snow. Entombed…and where? On top of an Alp? Even if he could get out, he could never survive.

  Blood ran down the side of his face. Into his eye…and stung a little.

  He was lying nearly on his back, with his knees up before him and the cockpit controls where the open sky should be. Just lucky to have landed on his ass instead of his head…could’ve been worse, could be hanging here upside down with the blood rushing to his head, looking dopey and unable….

  “Spock to Stiles. Can you hear me, Ensign?”

  The voice from the comm unit jolted him as if he’d been stricken bodily. He flinched. “What…?”

  “Ensign Stiles, this is Spock. We’ve reached escape velocity. Sensors indicate you’ve crashed and are stationary, but intact. Is that true? Are you down?”

  Stiles coughed and tried to focus his aching on the instrument panel. Yes, he could still see…tiny emergency lights cast a soft red glow, just enough to see by.

  “Yes, I, uh…I’m crashed,” he muttered, coughed again, then winced at the searing pain in his arm. “Down behind the lines….”

  “Are you stable?”

  “No idea.”

  Above him, the canopy was completely darkened to a severe gray by a ton of snow and ice and dirt, only the tempered windshield preventing him from being crushed or suffocated.

  How much fallout was he buried under? No way to know. Should he try to push out? Would it hold him here or let him slip down into a fissure? Was snow heavier than soil?

  “Snow…,” he murmured, perplexed. Then a gurgling laugh rose in his throat. “I’m from Port Canaveral.”

  The sound of his voice drummed in his ears. Should he be doing something? Trying to get out?

  There was no getting the canopy open under that much weight, and he sure couldn’t do it with only one arm.

  Still numb?

  Yup.

  “All wings, come to stratospheric formation. Transfer to space thrust.”

  “Coach, Brazil. Copy that. All wings comply.”

  “But I can still get down there. I can land on that mountain—”

  “Don’t take action until I get a fix on him. These readings aren’t steady.”

  That was Travis’s voice. He sounded strange….

  Several seconds went by, long ones. Almost a minute. Well past the time when the coach should’ve been clear of the mountains. What was happening?

  Then Ambassador Spock’s smooth words broke through the crackling sounds of the pilots. “The pursuit aircraft are moving away. They have given up. The coach is no longer in danger, Mr. Stiles.”

  Stiles cleared his throat and muttered, “Thanks for telling me, sir.”

  “One of the wings can now break formation and effect rescue with relative dispatch.”

  “Rescue?…oh…me….”

  With a grunt, Stiles pushed off his helmet, surprised to see a crack in it, and realized his head had been driven into the canopy’s side support strut. No wonder his head hurt.

  “They may want us to try that,” he decided. “There might be other hostiles out there. One ensign against five pilots and thirty-five dignitaries…Leave the fighters where they are, sir. I’ll just…stay here.”

  It was all bravado. If Spock insisted, Stiles knew he wouldn’t stand up to him. He could feel his friends listening, see Travis Perraton’s friendly face blanked with astonishment that they were leaving a man behind, see Perraton’s European features turn ruddy, his blue eyes widen. Suddenly Perraton—and all of them, really—seemed too young for this job. Maybe Stiles was fooling them, but he wasn’t fooling the ambassador.

  No one said anything. Nobody wanted to interrupt with the ambassador talking.

  Glad they didn’t say anything…that would’ve been even harder. Hearing their voices…

  Spock…a half-dozen Starfleet officers rolled into one. An ambassador of high standing and galactic respect. A name known in the farthest reaches, on the tiniest colonies, on the lips of every Federation enemy. Spock and Starfleet were almost the same word. He could’ve insisted on a rescue attempt. Stiles would’ve backed down, let himself be rescued. Looked like a dopey kid being pulled out of the water because he’d showed off and fallen in.

  Was he refusing rescue to avoid that moment?

  Spock didn’t press him. Stiles knew what that meant—he was being given something. Spock wasn’t countermanding Stiles’s decision to sacrifice himself. Ensign or not, Stiles was in charge, even if only in a token way. Nobody thought this would be a hard mission. He felt a little silly that Spock was giving in to him, handing him some kind of lollipop. On the other hand, was Spock going out of the way not to take something away from him? Maybe…

  A hard bump made the mountainside vibrate. He felt it, through the Frog’s skin, through the snow, through his jacket.

  “There’s somebody outside,” he spoke up. “Something just landed near me…it’s got to be them! They’re here—they found me!”

  “Yes, we have them on sensors. A Pojjana jump-jet just settled on the mountain near you.”

  Stiles’s mouth went suddenly dry. “How long…do you think they’ll take to get through to me?”

  Spock didn’t answer him. Maybe he was busy up there, steering that coach into space, avoiding the three Pojjan moons that looped the planet so far away, so much farther than Earth’s moon.

  “I didn’t know the coach could take that much stress,” he sighed. “You put a lot of angle on it. Why didn’t it stall? How do you do that?”

  “Simply, but the Academy prefers not to teach the trick. I forced the P/T levels over tolerance so the thrusters had more power.”

  “Why didn’t the tanks blow from the extra pressure?”

  “Tolerance levels are standardized at point of safety. Going over tolerance only means that measurement becomes unreliable.”

  “You mean you were just taking a chance?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wow…”

  Listening to thumps and thuds from the deep outside, Stiles saw a picture in his mind of the transport coach, piloted by Spock instead of himself, angling more steeping into the late-day sky than Stiles thought it possibly could. He never guessed a ship like that could take so much lift stress. He wouldn’t have known to take the chance of added stress, wouldn’t have been able to get the coach up fast enough to make use of the eleven seconds.

  “I can hear them outside.” He gazed up, only seven inches, to the snowed-over canopy. “They’re looking for me in the snow. They’re digging through…I hear the shovels…Maybe they’re putting explosives on me. Maybe they’re not going to dig me out at all. Why should they?”

  “Steady, Ensign. You will not be killed.”

  “Respectfully suggest you don’t know that, sir.”

  “Of course not. Ensign, this sector is now red. Some time may pass before the Federation can ne
gotiate for your release. Do you understand?”

  A tremor ran down Stiles’s spine. “You mean…it might take a couple of months?”

  “Or longer.”

  “Well…six months?” His hands chilled even beyond the cooling temperature in the cockpit. Sweat broke out on his brow in spite of the chill.

  Spock didn’t answer him. That meant something. Longer than six months?

  “Sir, tell my family…tell them I didn’t…or just say…”

  “I will, Mr. Stiles. Be assured of that.”

  With a sudden groan, Stiles shut his eyes. His request suddenly seemed silly, melodramatic. But more than anything else it was pointless. He reviewed in his mind the faces of his father and grandfather, his aunts and uncles, the wide extended legacy of Stiles service to Starfleet and several other notable planetary corps within the structure of the Federation. Wherever they lived, wherever they were, the Stiles family made a show for themselves.

  He shifted this way and that, but there was no room for movement. He was denied even that pitiful comfort and was forced to sit here and look back.

  “Sir,” he began again, “never mind about my family. Don’t tell them anything. Just tell them I’m…not around anymore.”

  There was a brief silence, heavy and notable, like the pause between movements of a symphony. The baton remained in the air, the audience didn’t applaud, the instruments were up.

  “I shall tell them you performed your duty most admirably, young man,” Spock slowly promised. “You rose to an unforeseen challenge.”

  A mirthless chuckle broke from Stiles’s chest. More charity. Good words for a pathetic slob, so he wouldn’t feel so pathetic.

  Too late.

  “Rose to it? I caused it. It was only unforeseen because I didn’t foresee it.” He shivered deeply, to his bones. “Don’t bother with my family. Starfleet’ll send them the official report. Don’t tell them anything else…they won’t be impressed. This story isn’t that good. Doing duty’s not enough for them. I’d be better off just lost at sea. No stories.”

  “Ensign,” Spock began again, “you needn’t cheat yourself. You fit into an age-old tapestry of military valor. Even the small deeds are knightly.”

  “Oh, please, sir, I’ve heard that since I was six. We take an oath…we wear uniforms…we take action…when there’s trouble, we go toward it instead of away from it. We’re military. Can’t argue with that. It’s got to mean something. If it means I stay here, then that’s what it means.”

  A mechanical whine, muffled by the snow, found its way down to him. Drilling. Or cutting, maybe. He must be trapped under rocks or—were there trees up this high? He hadn’t bothered looking.

  His cold face cracked with a sorry smile as he reviewed the last few seconds. “I hope the other guys can’t hear you talking to me this way.”

  Spock’s voice crackled. Growing more faint. Distant. “I sent Ensign Perraton to tend to the passengers. I have no need of a navigator. We are quite alone.”

  Overhead, the scratching sound was louder now, more deliberate. The diggers weren’t searching anymore. They were purposefully digging. They’d pinpointed this spot. Maybe a fin or wing was sticking out of the snow. Or maybe they had sensors that had caught him. They’d sure found him fast. Things sure could change suddenly.

  Stiles let his head fall against the high seat back. “So…how’d you know I wanted to be alone? All my life I’ve heard how Vulcans don’t have intuition…y’know, no…hunches. No emotional anchors, like us fallibles do.”

  “And you have believed the stories,” Spock said.

  Stiles touched a swelling on the side of his head and laughed minimally. “Oh, you’re making fun of me now.”

  “With you, Ensign,” the ambassador offered gently, “not of you.”

  “Everybody always says Vulcans can’t joke.”

  “Of course not. Nor do we love, fear, lie, or doubt.”

  Stiles laughed again. Strange that he could laugh…strange that this particular person could make him feel better when none of his friends had been able to.

  The shovels, diggers, drills…getting closer now. Something scratched the nose of the Frog. Stiles saw a finger of golden sunlight appear in front of his left knee. They were almost here. In minutes, he’d be in the hands of the enemy. Would they kill him?

  They had a lot of options. He had none. Here he was, trapped in his capsule, probably about to die, and even though his mission was successful, he crashed because of his own lack of foresight. His family was going to be disappointed in him…all those commanders, captains, lieutenants, heroes of the Romulan Wars—and one kid who never made it past ensign because he made a mistake on his first mission and got himself shot down.

  He’d blown it. Allowed himself to be distracted. Put all his fighters behind him and figured nobody would think to come up in front. He was ashamed that Spock had been forced to point out something so obvious. That’s what would go in the report, and on top of it all, after everything else, Spock was seeing that he was afraid.

  “It’s hard to breathe,” he wheezed. Life support off?

  “The blue marker dot on the upper left of your emergency grid, ensign. Push it upward.”

  “Blue dot…oh. Got it—I hear the fan now. That’s better…”

  Fresh air, siphoned from outside. Not warm, though. In fact, the incoming air was frigid. But air was air and it cleared his head.

  At the very least, he’d be captured now. Maybe tortured. Maybe killed. Would it be better to get killed right now, here on this mountain?

  A crawling aneurysm of mortal fear moved through his brain, infecting his body until he was cold and shuddering. He felt it working on him even as he tried to keep it in check. It tightened his throat and changed the timbre of his voice. Could Spock hear that in his voice? Hear that he was afraid?

  The sound of shovels scratched the top of his packed snow prison.

  “It’s getting cold….”

  Stiles shuddered through a sigh and this time saw his breath, as the chill from outside permeated the cockpit.

  Another scratch—broader, brighter. They’d have him in a minute or two. Now he could hear voices above. Bootsteps. Shouts.

  “Sir…”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know…how well I’m going to do,” he admitted.

  “This is hardly routine for you,” Spock offered. “You are twenty-two.”

  “Twenty-one.” Miserable now, beginning to feel the pain in his shoulder through fading numbness, he tried to shift his feet but failed even to do that.

  What did Spock mean? So he was twenty-one. So what?

  Old enough to control simple fears. Old enough to put fear aside. What was a veteran like Spock really thinking of him?

  He sank more deeply into his seat, let his legs go limp, flexed his good hand, and touched the frosted canopy near his face. “I guess this is where you tell me everything’ll be all right eventually, and I’m brave and ought to be proud of myself.”

  “I hesitate to quote poetry,” Spock said, and Stiles could almost see the hint of a smile.

  So he smiled too. “Sir, I wouldn’t know what to do with it if you did. I don’t even read the insides of my birthday cards.”

  For a moment there was no sound from the now-distant coach, no response, no coddling. The comm unit crackled, struggling to pull in the spaceborne signal through systems that were probably broken or fried.

  “I’m losing you, sir,” Stiles said.

  “Yes, your reception signal is thready.”

  “Should I try to boost?”

  “Distance is a factor. No need to strain yourself. I’ll boost from here.”

  Stiles’s hand fell back to his side and he let himself go limp, trying to ease the ache in his head. A little shaving of frost fell from the canopy where he’d touched it. The flakes landed on his right cheek and stuck there, like a frozen tear. His face was too cold even to melt it.

  “The Federation
will negotiate for your freedom,” Spock told him placidly. “I’ll see to it personally.”

  “Don’t make a spectacle,” Stiles grumbled. “I don’t want to be known as the little goof with the big rescue. Then somebody else’ll be the hero and I’ll just be the jerk who crashed in enemy territory and cost a mint to get back. I don’t need that…God, my shoulder hurts…think they know how to set a human arm?”

  “Yes, they know how.”

  Spock’s voice was small now, but clear of static, patient and gentle, laden with understanding of what he was feeling. How could that be?

  “I have worked with many humans in my lifetime. There is great comfort for me among them, and much to admire. Above all traits, I believe, I most admire their resilience. Be pliant, Eric. Once you survive this, you’ll be a more valuable officer. And a better man.”

  Stiles heard the words, but it was as if he were listening to wind. Substantial, effective…but he didn’t understand what made it happen. An instant later he could barely remember what Spock had just said—all he remembered was the sound of his own name spoke so adaptably by that famous voice.

  “What do you think I should do?” he asked simply. His throat was raw now. There were fumes in here. “If they don’t kill me…what do I do to change? I already try so hard…how can I be better?”

  Now that the question was asked, he steeled himself to listen, to remember a long sermon, the kind his grandfather used to lay on him when there was some lesson to be learned or some grave social gaffe to be corrected. All the way home from wherever they were, talk, talk, talk, preach, preach, preach.

  And that was why he was surprised. As sunlight broke through above his face and the snow was scraped away from the cockpit’s canopy, as he saw the faces of Pojjana soldiers peel back the rocks and crud from his Starfleet coffin, Stiles absorbed Spock’s final word. Only one word…it echoed and echoed, rolled and settled, it chimed a resonant bell tone. He would hear it for the rest of his life.

  “Relax.”

  Chapter Four

  HARD TO BREATHE. Stuffy.

  Metal banging against metal. The whine of mechanical treads. Lower pitch than the aircraft. A hatch breaking open—and Stiles fell inelegantly forward and landed on a stone floor.