STAR TREK: NEW EARTH - CHALLENGER

by Diane Carey

  The message ended. The comm equipment bleeped in confirmation. Billy took the enabler back out of its socket and slipped it into his vest.

  “Know what that means, kiddies?” he asked.

  Deliberately not meeting McCoy’s eyes, Uhura lolled back in her chair and struck a queenly pose. Maidenshore seemed to like that. “No, Billy. What does it mean?”

  “Means the jig is up. They’re sending out a call for all their crew to come back to the starship.”

  “So? That happens all the time. We rotate crews regularly.”

  Maidenshore shook a finger at her. “Now, now, don’t try to kid a kidder. There’s only two reasons to recall your crew. One, you’re under attack, or two, you’re leaving. They’re not under attack. Ergo . . . they’re leaving.”

  “They might be,” Uhura conceded. “But Captain Kirk’s not that predictable.”

  “Jimmy? Sure, he is. He wants the two of you to report to your posts. I’m not ready to give you back, though. Don’t get up hope. He’s not going to hold up his whole starship to wait for you and the doctor.”

  McCoy rubbed his arms to ward off the chill of the barbaric conditions Maidenshore forced him to live in. Uhura knew what he was going through. Maidenshore treated McCoy poorly and herself well, probably to set them against each other in some other kind of psychological leverage.

  The doctor shifted forward on the bunk. His eyes were sallow, reddened. “I don’t know what you think all this is going to do for you, Billy. You can’t skim enough refined olivium to make that big a difference, and the unrefined ore your men are pulling off asteroids won’t yield enough to give you leverage.”

  “Doc, these robotoid things are doing me a huge favor by stuffing the olivium back in the rock vault. They’re taking refined olivium away from the colonists and stuffing it all back into the Quake Moon. This is Miracle Maidenshore at work. Billy the Slick. I live a charmed life. Nothing can touch me. My grandmother used to tell me that. Whatever’s best for Billy, that’s what should happen.”

  Was McCoy all right? He seemed alert, though debilitated, chilly, and ill fed. Offering a kind of shrug, he managed to communicate that he was faring well enough, day by day. She suspected, though, that his value was waning. Very dangerous. Anything that lost its value to Billy Maidenshore would find its future in doubt.

  Uhura tried to pay him some attention without suggesting to Maidenshore that she was less than mesmerized by his self-involvement. He certainly enjoyed hearing himself talk and anything he spilled could be used against him, somehow, somewhere, by somebody. Though she was a communications expert and famed for her speaking voice, Uhura had learned that much could be learned from keeping silent and listening.

  “I decide to skim olivium off the colonists,” Maidenshore was saying, “and warehouse it over there in Vellynidiot’s solar system, and he comes along and begs me to let him do it. He doesn’t even know what’s good for him, so he does what’s good for me. He spreads the word, and everybody else falls in line. I’ve done this before—it always works. Get the bonehead slobberdog media on your side, and you can’t lose. Vellyngaith’s my media this time. Last time it was the bonehead colonists. That’s the trick—you just get a gaggle of clods to swallow your message, sit back and have a cigar while they do your work for you.” He leaned back as if to demonstrate, nodded in agreement with himself, and muttered, “What’s amazing is how rabidly they’ll protect you while you suck their blood. . . .”

  Chilled by the ironic truth, confidence given to such a slimeball by a lifetime of having other people let themselves be conned, Uhura found herself glad she hadn’t eaten recently or she’d be forced to hold it down. “There’s only so much you can do,” she said, “from a ship that everybody thinks is still a mining vessel, even if you’ve taken over the operation.”

  Maidenshore shook his head and chuckled. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

  “Of course not,” McCoy droned. “We’re losing our will to live.”

  Uhura warned him with a glance, then asked, “Pay attention to what?”

  “To those ’bots. Think, think. When did they show up?” He paused, waiting for them to answer, but neither would play his game. “When the Quake Moon blew!”

  “The probes didn’t come for over a year after that, Billy,” McCoy reminded. “Your evidence is—”

  “They didn’t come before that either. The explosion must’ve triggered something. Maybe it takes months to send its signal. Kirk found out they streak out of here at warp nine. Maybe they’re going far. Why else would you need warp nine?”

  “What signal?” Uhura asked.

  “The moon. A big flare gun. It lights off, and here they come to collect the diamonds. Whatever these things are, they can swallow a full phaser hit and that means their tech’s way beyond the Federation’s power to stop them. The Fed can’t stop them, they’re coming in and collecting the olivium, and they haven’t found mine. See, that’s how I figure the moon was a flare. What happened here, that didn’t happen in the Kauld system? No moon exploded. Nothing’s showed the robots where my olivium is. Since it happened here, they won’t be searching way over there. And when all the stuff here is confiscated, guess who’ll be in control of all that’s left. And now, to top it off, Kirk is taking the starship and blasting off. And you think I’m not charmed? This should be artwork.”

  “You haven’t been listening to the broadcasts as closely as you think, Billy,” Uhura told him. “But I have. If Captain Kirk is leaving, it’s only because he knows the colony will be guarded by the Peleliu. Even with damage, the cruiser is strong enough to beat off a Kauld assault in conjunction with planetary defenses we’ve set up.”

  He smiled at her with a sidelong nastiness. “Come on, you’re smarter than that. I’ve got the reports. Remember when I had you intercept the reports coming in before Peleliu got here? You should’ve read ’em. Like cheap novels! They gave me everything I need. Now I don’t have to win the hard way. All I have to do is push Roger the Lake Loon over the edge. He’ll take his whole ship down with him. Even Vell-in-hell ought to be able to do that much without botching it.”

  Shifting on the bunk, McCoy rubbed his right leg with a bloodless hand. Behind Maidenshore’s back, his wide eyes communicated an unhappy message to Uhura.

  Don’t say anything, she willed him to understand. Just let him posture and spout. Don’t get in trouble. He already doesn’t like you.

  “So Kirk’s gone,” Maidenshore continued, “and he’s left the chicken coop in the hands of a burnt-out has-been and his overworked rookie exec in a busted-up tank. Hey! There is a God!”

  Hoping at least to provide some withered example of integrity, Uhura suggested, “Is that an excuse to steal?”

  The joy dropped out of Maidenshore’s expression. He could don and doff sincerity like changing hats. “Stealing? I’m not stealing. I’m hoarding. There’s a big difference. Stealing is silly. It’s got limits. They’d figure it out, then shut down operations and have a war. I’m better than that. I’m smarter. I know to set up a situation to make them bargain with us. If you can’t beat ’em, exploit ’em.”

  “You underestimate people in general, don’t you, Billy?” McCoy observed. “It’s just a habit with you.”

  Maidenshore wagged his satisfied-salesman expression. When he spoke, his words carried a sudden honesty. He raised his brows. “Doc . . . people in general live down to my expectations.”

  The disturbing truth made Uhura’s insides shrink. He was right. People had played into his hands over and over, all his life, from what he had told them. An unscrupulous, unrepentant man could easily succeed if people swallowed the manure he spread, and they seemed to do that with spice. The whole colony, even the whole Federation, could find itself caught in a web under the control of a single unrepentant spider with a golden web. Justice didn’t always come.

  “This is the people’s own choice,” he went on. “You think I could succeed if they didn’t fall off e
very cliff? This is my chance to eradicate the illusion of law enforcement in the cluster. By the time Jim Kirk gets back here, I’ll own the whole Belle Terre complex. He’ll be negotiating with King Billy.

  “After Peleliu’s gone, I’ll destroy all other transports, Blood ships, merchant ships, port facilities, everything, the planetary defenses, the power plants . . . if they want to deal, they’ll deal with me.”

  Abruptly he came back to the moment, and turned to McCoy. “I have to deal with you, though, don’t I?” With a swagger he came to stand over the doctor, intimidating as a vulture. “I don’t think I need you anymore, Hippocrates.”

  Uhura bolted to her feet. “Billy—!”

  He looked at her. “What? Playtime’s over. I’ll have to decide whether to kill you two or not. Still, I might come up with some use for you. If not, well, we don’t live forever, do we?”

  He turned to her, sidling nearer with his idea of warmth, as if the doctor were suddenly gone. “I could kill him now, but I’m not that bad a guy. I’ll prove it to you eventually.”

  Repulsed, Uhura found the strength to move closer to him, measuring carefully just how much attraction he would buy from a store he knew was closed. “You’ve proven a lot to me already, I have to admit.”

  “Uhura,” McCoy interrupted, “have you lost your sense of decency?”

  She held out her long-fingered hand and spoke musically. “He hasn’t hurt anybody yet, has he? Everybody deserves a second chance. I’ve known lots of powerful men, but a man who knows how to use power . . . I haven’t found many of those . . . not in years.”

  The doctor sighed and glared at her with his strained ice-blue eyes. “You always did wilt at the sparkle of jewelry.”

  “I’m a woman, aren’t I?” she agreed. Leaning back on the desk Maidenshore had provided for her, she made sure her knees were out a little and her shoulders back some. “I used to think Captain Kirk was one of those men. Then he accepted the admiralty. I lost a lot of respect for him. I only came out here to see if he had any of the old spark left.”

  Billy Maidenshore’s eyes crinkled with satisfaction. He rolled a pinch of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe you need a different brand of furnace. What do you say . . . is it possible?”

  She tipped her head, lowered her chin, and raised her eyes to him. “It’s possible, if you stretch the definition . . . but words are my life, you know. . . . Why don’t you up the ante, Billy? Make me like you a little.”

  “Name it.”

  “Give McCoy heat in his quarters. A little better food. After all, a little can go a long way between people.”

  A chuckle from his throat. Was he aroused, or just amused?

  “Sure,” he blurted. “Why not? But only because it’s you.”

  Not giving too much, she managed part of a smile. “When I know you better, I’ll introduce you to an old African ritual. Very colorful. Very intimate.”

  “Yeah, sure.” He laughed, and moved to the doorway to cue the locking mechanism. “I like how that sounds. Why don’t you two just visit for a while?” As he left, he flashed his self-ingratiated smile. “Have fun talking about me, now.”

  A moment later, he was gone. Yet, as always, the lingering presence of Billy Maidenshore remained a haunting reality even when he wasn’t around.

  Leonard McCoy gave himself the gift of a long, relieved sigh. Nothing about it, though, suggested they weren’t still in trouble. He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them and looked at her. “What old African ritual?”

  Uhura settled back in her creaking chair and noticed that her thighs were sore from disuse. “Cutting his heart out with his own teeth.”

  “Oh, that one. He’s an act, isn’t he?”

  “He’s a whole circus,” she mused. “What boggles me is that anybody believes a word of his hollow promises. It makes me nervous that he tells us his plans.”

  “Tells you his plans. Remember what I said? He’s trying to impress you.”

  “I don’t know, Leonard. I think he’s trying to impress himself.”

  “The way people give in to him, he might just have a case. Why does he leave us alone like this when he knows we’ll plot against him?”

  “He likes us to talk about him. Makes him feel like a man.”

  “Are you sure he’s not bugging us somehow?”

  “Believe me.”

  “All right, sorry . . . our problem is, he’s winning and we can’t stop him. Jim and Spock might be leaving, but not because they think Belle Terre’ll be safe. You heard Spock’s voice. He didn’t sound good.”

  That got her attention. “You mean he sounds tired? Or ill?”

  “No . . . something else. I’m not sure.”

  “We have to warn Captain Lake somehow.” McCoy scanned the useless boards of bleeping communications equipment that Uhura couldn’t make work without flagging any ten of Maidenshore’s warning systems. “Oh, I know, big words—Maidenshore’s anticipated every move we could possibly make. If he can inhibit this system so successfully that even you can’t break through with a message—”

  “You haven’t been on the bridge as much as I have,” she reminded. “You’re not a tactician. You’ve been a doctor.” She raised an eyebrow. “I know how the captain thinks tactically. This is an ideal time to use what I’ve learned.”

  “Which is?”

  “First, battles are frequently decided in the first few seconds, by whoever gets in the first licks. We can make sure Peleliu gets it.”

  “How?”

  “If you’re being dragged through the woods by hostile natives about to attack the settlers, all you really have to do is make a noise. Right?”

  “I suppose it’s right. But we can’t make a noise.”

  “Vellyngaith’s going to be sneaking up on the Peleliu and the planet. He’ll do it during Gamma Night.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Really, Doctor.”

  “All right, but you still can’t make a noise. He’s got all the communication equipment inhibited. You told me that.”

  “Maidenshore expects me to do something, because I’m the signal specialist.”

  “I’d say that was a fair guess.” The doctor stood up, grasped the pole at the end of the bunk, and used it as leverage while he stretched his legs one at a time.

  Uhura watched him for a few seconds, mentally getting exercise just by watching him. “He won’t expect anything from you,” she said. “That’s why you’ll be the one acting out our plan, on my orders.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.”

  “We have to use the equipment he isn’t expecting us to use, to alert Peleliu that there’s a force approaching.”

  Suddenly interested, McCoy stopped moving his legs and squared her with a leer. “Like what?”

  “Like ballistics. Armaments. Weapons. He doesn’t expect those to have any use.”

  “From a mine ship? We don’t have anything better than flare phasers! Oh—I heard myself say flare, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I’m a genius, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, you are. Doctor, you’re in for a change of venue. You just became a weapons operative.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Enterprise

  Stardate 6877.1.

  Speed: Warp factor nine point two four.

  Course: Six one zero mark seven, zenith plus.

  Leaving the Sagittarius Star Cluster.

  “BACK IN SPACE, Spock. It feels good. Without all the baggage . . . no bale cubic cargo space to worry about, no passenger disputes, no arbitrations clauses, no stowage diagrams, boom capacity or obstruction dimensions, no civilians . . . just our crew,our ship . . . and space.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Cued by the strained voice that answered him, Jim Kirk looked to his right. Certainly concern showed in his face, but Spock didn’t look back, in fact had barely paid attention as his captain mused aloud.

  Good to be out in space, yes,
but off kilter. Kirk tried to fool himself into feeling comfortable. He couldn’t do it. Other than space and the ship, things were out of whack. Of the bridge contingent he depended upon so much, only Sulu was here with them, at his helm. McCoy was still back at Belle Terre, missing in action. So was Uhura. Both were now gaping holes in his command fabric, and a concern that he had to actively force from his mind once a quick search had failed to turn them up. Chekov had been reassigned to another ship, now as first officer. Scotty too was still back on Belle Terre, furiously working to build some kind of useful planetary fleet of utility ships from the gaggle of burned-out hulks left.

  And just a few steps away was Spock, by far the hero responsible for the mind-boggling calculations and split-second maneuvers that brought the two moons together and that stopped the Kauld laser and their siliconic gel sabotage. He didn’t look like a man resting upon laurels, or even particularly remembering them. Spock was here, yes, but not here too.

  Holding her much-reduced family in the petal of her cupped hand, the starship that had protected them for years, extrinsic proof of their high-priced wins, streaked through space pretending there wasn’t a strain on her bones at this speed. Enterprise gracefully turned her shoulder to the insult, proving herself once more not just a jumper but a workhorse.

  Warp nine. A fiendish accomplishment, still barely possible, corrosive to the core, technology gone back to barbarism. The sheer velocity might shake them apart at any moment, without warning.

  “Tell me what we’re passing through, Spock,” Kirk spoke up to break the mechanical bridge noises as the ship strained onward. “Be certain we’re charting as we go.”

  Even Spock seemed to have faltered into the dangerous lull. He actually flinched and glanced at Kirk before steadying to his sensor. The colored lights played on his face from within the readout hood, and plucked at the charcoal helmet of his hair.