by KATHY OLTION
Besides, he had an ulterior motive. He knew that Governor Pardonnet was waiting in the Enterprise’s conference room, cooling his heels and making small talk with Shucorion, the former alien spymaster turned ally. The young governing head of the Belle Terre colony would not be happy with the wait, nor with the company, but Kirk wanted to make a point. He’d invited the governor to this meeting days ago to discuss the need for a stronger defensive system for the planet, and Pardonnet’s own schedule had determined the meeting time. He had insisted on putting it at the end of his workday, symbolically giving it the lowest status of his many appointments and no doubt hoping that Kirk would cancel it because of the on-board hour.
A small smile tugged at Kirk’s lips as he strode into the turbolift. No chance of that. He couldn’t have planned it better himself. Timing was everything, after all.
“You have the bridge,” he said to Spock, then the turbolift doors slid closed and he rode it down to deck 7 and the briefing room where Pardonnet waited.
The door had barely opened before Pardonnet said, “Captain, I am a busy man. I don’t have the time to sit around this ship waiting for you—”
“It’s good to see you too, Governor,” Kirk said. “You’re looking well.” In reality, the usually calm, well-dressed young man appeared somewhat rumpled, as though he’d spent all of Saturday night in his Sunday best.
Kirk looked at the stocky, blue-skinned alien sitting two seats to Pardonnet’s right. “Shucorion, thank you for joining us.”
The alien bowed his head in the traditional greeting of the Blood, as his people called themselves. “At your service,” he replied.
At your service. Sure. Only so far as that service furthered his own goals of supremacy for the Blood over their longtime enemies, the Kauld, Kirk thought, but he merely nodded and took his seat across from the two leaders. They had chosen to sit with their backs to the viewport, ignoring the sight of Belle Terre floating serenely in space only thirty thousand kilometers away. Was it the frontier mentality of never putting your back to a door, or were they both tired of looking at the source of all their troubles?
Kirk didn’t mind. This was his ship, and a planet seen from geosynchronous orbit was beautiful no matter how much trouble it was.
“Captain, can we get on with this?” Pardonnet asked.
“Of course. My apologies for being late, but we were securing the bridge for Gamma Night.”
“What?” Pardonnet checked his wrist chronometer. “For the love of . . . I can’t be stuck here for the next ten hours!”
“I’m afraid you have no choice. Not to worry though. You can have access to the recreation areas when we’re finished, or if you prefer, I’m sure we have a free room where you can rest.”
A look of resignation slid over Pardonnet’s face. “We’ll worry about that later. Let’s get started.”
“Very well, Governor, I’ll cut right to the heart of the matter. We have to start building up our defenses again. The Eau Clair flood wiped out over half of your ground-based shuttle fleet.” He pointedly used the official name for the river valley, rather than the colonists’ own term for it: the Big Muddy.
Pardonnet opened his mouth to speak, but Kirk kept going without pause. “You’ve decommissioned three of the remaining space freighters just in the last week. I know it was in the original mission plan to use the cargo ships for raw materials once we arrived here, but the situation is different now. We’re sitting on top of a gold mine, and everybody wants a piece of it. Even if we can keep the prospectors at bay, the Blood and the Kauld could resume hostilities at any moment, and if they do, we’ll find ourselves in the middle of it within hours.”
Shucorion didn’t even blink, which by itself told Kirk he’d hit uncomfortably close to the mark. The Blood leader had allied his people with the Federation for one reason only: protection from their enemies, and everyone knew it. Neither race was native to Belle Terre—their star system was light-years distant—but ever since the discovery of quasar olivium deep inside Belle Terre’s moon, they had conspired as much to keep each another away from the new resource as to gain it for themselves. If the Kauld ever gained a toehold in the Belle Terre system, there would be some “regrettable incident” that would spark a battle, and Shucorion would scream for military assistance from Kirk and the Belle Terre colony until they were driven away.
Kirk looked back to Pardonnet. “We need to refit all of our spaceworthy ships with phasers and beef up their shields. Likewise, the colonists should all be trained to handle a ground invasion. I don’t know if it’ll be human or Kauld or somebody we haven’t even heard of, but it’s only a matter of time before somebody tries to pick your plum, and we’ve got to be ready for them.”
Pardonnet steepled his fingers in front of him on the tabletop. “Captain, I appreciate your concern, and if I’ve learned anything from you in our . . . shall we say ‘tempestuous’ past, it’s not to underestimate your assessment of a military situation. However, I don’t really think this is a military situation.”
“We just shot down another hostile ship less than an hour ago,” Kirk reminded him.
“I heard. It was a single ship, wasn’t it? A few overeager privateers now and then hardly comprise a significant threat. Besides, even that will soon stop now that we’ve begun mining olivium and selling it to the highest bidder. Our prices are high, and the risk of piracy en route to the developed sectors of the galaxy no doubt makes the price even higher by the time it reaches the open market, but surely it can’t cost as much to simply buy the product as it would cost to fight a prolonged battle over interstellar distances for it.”
Kirk admired his reasoning. If everyone looked at the universe the way he did, there would be no need for a military buildup. Unfortunately, not everyone was quite so logical in their thinking.
“You’re being libertarian again,” he said. “It would be a fine system if everyone was a nice guy, but some people like taking things without paying for them. The only way to stop people like that from doing what they want is to make it physically impossible. Maybe if we make a big enough show of our preparations, they’ll see it’s impossible before they try, but either way we’ve got to make our military presence strong enough that we can win the battle whether it happens or not.”
“Spoken like a true soldier,” Pardonnet said.
Kirk felt those words strike home. He didn’t want to be a soldier, and Pardonnet knew it. Nothing would please Kirk more than taking the Enterprise out into unexplored territory again, to search for strange new worlds instead of babysitting a bunch of colonists who had gotten in over their heads. Given a choice, he would do just that; but he didn’t have a choice, and Pardonnet knew that, too. They were stuck with each other until the situation changed, and like an old married couple they simply enjoyed pushing each other’s hot buttons once in a while.
Kirk resisted the urge to return fire. He merely stated the obvious. “At the moment, a soldier is what you need. Believe me, the instant my presence is no longer necessary, I’m warp nine for deep space, but until that time I’m your guardian angel.”
Shucorion coughed politely. “The Blood would gladly augment your defense force with more ships of our own.”
Kirk suppressed a sardonic grin. “I’m sure you would. Unfortunately, that would precipitate the very conflict with the Kauld that we’re trying to avoid. We need our own ships, staffed from the colony.”
“What?” Pardonnet said indignantly. “You want my people, too? We’re already shorthanded everywhere !”
Shucorion ignored his outburst. “Or you need a neutral third party,” said the alien. “Fourth, in this case.”
“Hire peacekeepers?” Kirk asked. The idea had never even occurred to him. “Where?”
“There are many other races in this sector.”
“And what’s to keep them from taking the olivium for themselves if we let them in here with warships?”
“We are. The Blood, the Federation, and ye
s, even the Kauld. If none of us can win on our own, we will work together to ensure that no one else does, either.”
Kirk thought it over for all of two seconds. “No. That sort of thing has been tried before all through human history, but it always falls apart. The different sides make temporary alliances and gang up on each other until everybody’s at war with everybody else. We need one very powerful force here, not half a dozen small ones.”
“And who guarantees the loyalty of the force?” asked Pardonnet.
“I do,” Kirk said flatly.
Pardonnet nodded. “Your word is as good as the deed. So is your first officer’s. In fact, I believe I could trust nearly every member of your crew to uphold the principles of the Federation against the greatest temptation. But what happens if this ship is destroyed? Suppose a spy gets on board with an antimatter bomb?” His eyes flicked momentarily to Shucorion, then back to Kirk. “Or suppose some errant asteroid smashes you out of orbit during Gamma Night. What then? Who takes your role, and what is their agenda?”
“We’ll establish a chain of command.”
“Which will only be as strong as its weakest link. No, Captain. I much prefer a society without arms at all to a society where everyone holds a phaser to his neighbor’s head.”
“People have tried that, too,” Kirk reminded him. “Remember Nantes III? Providence Prime? Felicity Alpha?”
Pardonnet narrowed his eyes. “No.”
“Not surprising,” Kirk said. “They don’t exist anymore. The first hostile force that came along wiped out every colony.”
Shucorion stared at both men in open astonishment. “You left colonies undefended?”
Kirk snorted. “Many times. Humanity has more than its share of idiots.” He looked quickly at Pardonnet. “And no, Governor, that was not a barb at you. But those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”
Pardonnet nodded. “I understand the need for security, and I agree with you in principle. I’m just trying to balance that against the colony’s need for resources. Our forests all went up in smoke during the Burn, the chaotic weather wipes out any crops we don’t keep under cover, and we lost entire communities during the flood. We’ve got nothing to rebuild with except brick and whatever we can scrounge from the cargo ships. If we turn them all into gunships, I’m afraid there won’t be a colony to protect.”
“We’re getting smelters on-line,” Kirk reminded him. “It won’t be long before they’ll outpace any salvage operation.”
“ ‘Not long’ to you is an eternity to someone living in a tent,” Pardonnet pointed out.
Kirk looked out the viewport at the planet below. From here it looked like paradise. He wouldn’t mind staying in a tent on one of the far-side islands that had missed the brunt of the blast when the olivium moon had exploded, but doing it in a refugee camp would be another story. Pardonnet definitely had a point, but dammit, so did he. They could both have what they wanted if they could just wait a while, but neither could afford to do that.
He looked over to Shucorion. “How about a different kind of assistance besides military?” he asked.
Shucorion cocked his head to the side, a trace of amusement sparkling in his eyes. “You would accept emergency housing from us?”
“I don’t see why not,” Kirk said, glancing from him to Pardonnet, who had already opened his mouth to protest. “It would be a good chance for the colony to use some of its newfound wealth, and the influx of olivium into your economy would do you a world of good, too. Plus the shipments of building material would allow us to demonstrate your ability to field a fleet on short notice, but would do it without threatening the Kauld. We would all win.”
“Indeed,” said Shucorion. He seemed quite pleased, as well he should. There were far more subtle implications to the deal than a simple trade. Shucorion’s people had started out opposed to the Federation presence on Belle Terre. They had later become allies, but uneasy ones, still unsure how they would fare in dealing with a power that spanned hundreds of stars. By asking this simple favor, the colony would be taking the first step toward making them true confederates, not just the weaker partners in a marriage of convenience.
Of course there would be complications.
“Captain,” Pardonnet said. “No offense to Shucorion, but have you seen what the Blood consider housing?”
“No,” Kirk said. He’d been too busy with the colony to look at anything outside the Belle Terre system. “But it’s got to be better than tents.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” the governor said.
Shucorion laughed. “Don’t worry. Mud huts don’t travel well. We will bring prefabricated plasteel panels that you can assemble as you wish.”
“At what price?”
Shucorion yawned. “I’m afraid I don’t deal directly in such trivialities, but I can assure you that the price will not be exorbitant. I will have my people call your people and work out the details.”
Pardonnet blushed slightly, and Kirk suppressed a smile. One of the hardest things for a leader to learn was how to delegate the details.
“Good,” Kirk said, laying his hands flat on the table. “That’s solved. You’ll get your building materials, and we’ll keep the colony ships in orbit for defense. Now let’s talk about training ground troops.”
Pardonnet looked again at his wristchron. “Must we?”
“You’re stuck here until gamma night’s over,” Kirk said. “We might as well take advantage of the opportunity.”
Pardonnet leaned toward Shucorion. “ ‘Opportunity,’ he calls it. Very well, then, lay on, Macduff.”
“Okay, here’s what I was thinking. . . .” Kirk began, but as he settled in for a long round of negotiations, his mind was already thinking ahead to the next problem he had to solve. He’d been so worried about the Kauld and about profiteers from back home that he had completely ignored the threat from other quarters, but Shucorion’s innocent suggestion had shown him his oversight. Even if he didn’t hire peacekeepers from among the locals, he needed to learn who was out there and how they felt about the Federation presence on Belle Terre.
He would have to part with at least one starship for a survey of local space. And that ship would need a crew. Who should he send on the mission?
Chapter Six
“YOU’RE KIDDING, RIGHT?” Dr. McCoy rubbed the sleep from his eyes and regarded Kirk’s face in the viewscreen, but he could detect no sign of a joke in his captain’s features. In fact, Kirk looked a bit haggard, as if he had been up all night. That would explain the dawn call—it was already midmorning up there, and Kirk had probably decided if he couldn’t sleep, nobody else would either. Good thing Gamma Night had disrupted communications through the night or he would surely have called even earlier.
“No, I’m not kidding, Bones,” said Kirk. “I need someone who can assess a situation quickly with whatever data they’ve got on hand, instead of waiting for every detail before they make a decision.”
“I’m not sure if I take that as a compliment,” McCoy drawled. “Shootin’ from the hip is a good way to get people killed.”
Kirk shook his head. “This is a scouting mission, not an in-depth study. I just want to know who’s out there, and I want the information to come from my crew members, not Shucorion. We can send out another expedition to investigate anything interesting you turn up, but this is just a first glance.”
“What you’re saying is, you want me to perform triage on the entire Sagittarian sector.”
“Right.”
McCoy drummed his fingers on the edge of the communications console. “Who are you sending with me?”
“Scotty.”
That was a relief. At least they would get there, wherever “there” was. “And who else?” he asked.
“That’s it. We’re sending you out in a refitted cargo tug. It’s all engines and very little living space, but it’s fast, and there’s more than enough room for two.”
“I guess I should be than
kful you didn’t bottle me up with that pointy-eared computer,” McCoy muttered as he stood up and reached for his clothing.
Then he heard a bleep from the subspace scanners and realized Kirk was on the bridge. “No offense intended, Spock,” he said, turning around to draw on his pants.
“None taken, Doctor,” the Vulcan said from off screen. “I assure you, I am similarly relieved.”
He pulled on his green turtleneck, buckled his pants, and turned around again. “When do we leave?”
“As soon as Scotty gets everything on line. He says he can’t possibly do it in less than two days.”
“So I should expect him to be ready sometime this afternoon,” McCoy asserted.
Kirk smiled. “At the latest.”
“I’ll pack my bags.”
“Good. Kirk out.”
After the screen winked off, McCoy sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his face again. It was a hospital bed in one of the unused rooms on the second floor, a place to bunk down for the night and little more, but it had become a home-away-from-home during his extended “shore leave.” He had grown used to the quiet peacefulness of it after hours, the view of rolling hills out the window during the day, and the convenience of living in the midst of the colony’s largest city.
The food was about as good as cafeteria food anywhere, but it beat the rations he and Scotty would be eating on board their converted cargo tug. He sighed and headed down the hall into the ’fresher, then went on down to breakfast. Might as well have one last real egg before he left.
He found Lilian Coates there, delivering fresh produce from her garden on the way to the school, where she was both the librarian and the chief administrator. Everyone wore multiple hats in the colony, but McCoy wondered how she balanced two careers and still had time for gardening.
“Good morning,” he said as they met in the doorway. “Here, let me help you with that.” He took one of the two baskets she was carrying, admiring the ripe tomatoes that filled it to the brim. Her basket was equally full of firm green peppers.