STAR TREK: NEW EARTH - CHALLENGER

by Diane Carey

  Right now he was picking his way, knee deep, through a mountain of sorted parts in the salvage valley, rattling off just these kinds of decisions into his communicator as he moved while using his trusty padd for ballast.

  “And don’t forget to expand the bay by two meters on each side when you do the conversion. It won’t do us any good if we can’t get a standard shuttle inside.”

  On the other end, Zane Bonifay’s voice sounded strained, but not impatient yet. “Understood. What about the tractor-beam projector? You want it mounted against G deck, or higher?”

  “Just high enough to miss the elevator. We don’t have time to be fancy. Just make it work right.”

  “We’re going to have to cram the bay control room over to the far starboard side then.”

  “I don’t care where it is.”

  “Then we’ll cram it.”

  “That’s well, Zane, carry on.”

  He snapped his communicator off, hoping for a few minutes of blessed silence, but when he turned in another direction he was startled by the approach of Shucorion climbing up the hill of junk.

  “You requested to see me, Mr. Keller?”

  “Oh . . . thanks for coming.” Keller took the moment to rehang the padd under his arm and give his scalp a scratch. “How are your men doing since we left the ship?”

  “They have work.”

  “Ah, good. That’s good, right?”

  “Always. Thank you for asking.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry I hit you. I was out of line.”

  The apology seemed to perplex the Blood leader. His handsome blue complexion flushed a bit. Was he embarrassed? He paused to think about this, then offered, “If it would help, you may hit me again.”

  How could someone so experienced, settled, and steady be so childlike? Were all the Blood like this? Keller knew these people could hunker down to a task like no one else, focus their attention to a singular purpose and whittle it away until their goal was met, then clean up their mess and polish the floor behind them. What in their history had made them so hard to insult?

  Closing the distance between them with a few slow steps, Keller distilled, “Don’t you take anything personally?”

  “It’s not personal,” Shucorion said. “You don’t know me well enough.”

  Interesting. In fact, downright enlightening. Keller paused and scoured him with a long look.

  “You don’t even take the Kauld threat personally, do you? You’ve had to fight with these people for uncounted generations, but you don’t seem to hate them.”

  “Blood and Kauld have been locked in struggle since we found each other. What purpose would be served by hating them?”

  “I dunno . . . it kinda helps us humans. . . . Are the Kauld like this too? Fighting because they think one or the other of you has to prevail? And there’s nothing personal?”

  “I imagine so. I’ve seldom spoken to them. Only lately, since Federation became attracted to the Cluster.”

  “What do you get out of winning?”

  “We get to live.”

  “Hm.” Thinking, Keller plodded away. “They use a few things we haven’t bothered with since the invention of gunpowder. Spears, for one.”

  “Yes, the javelins.” Since Shucorion didn’t know where this conversation was headed, he settled down to sit on the blade of a hoverloader and took each question as it came. “Javelins are only for use in very close proximity. They can’t be aimed accurately at any distance. You simply fire them and they go where they go.”

  “Our deflector shields should’ve stopped them. They must’ve fallen and we didn’t even know it.” He hung his hands on his hips and groaned, “No excuse for that.”

  “Without the Blind,” Shucorion said, “ships could never approach closely enough to use them.”

  “Definitely a Gamma Night weapon.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is a problem. A whole new way to think about strategics. It’s virtually hand-to-hand fighting, only with spaceships. We haven’t had to fight that way . . . just about forever. I don’t think we ever had a period of hull-knockers. You’d have to go back to pirates on the open sea to get that kind of intimate conflict. Fighting in space within twenty kilometers of each other? Whew.”

  Shucorion simply nodded and helped him step over a particularly snaggletoothed piece of wreckage. “Is there something I can help you search for?”

  Keller held up his eternal padd, which had become permanently attached to his left arm. “Know what this is?”

  “A display connection to your computers.”

  “Right. It’s a ‘personal access display device.’ We can tie it in to any computer mainframe and access information we need. Some of them are unit-specific, but this is just my all-round load lugger. It’s not a tricorder, it doesn’t read anything, but you can pull out information when you’re nowhere near a terminal. See the screen?”

  “Yes.”

  “The diagram is a Keeling shank. I saw one on this pile last time I was here. I need a clean example, so we can have more made.”

  “The diagram won’t do?”

  “It’s better if they can actually hold one. I’m about to give up, though. I just thought I saw one.”

  “Then we shall search.” Immediately Shucorion turned away and began scanning the lumping wreck pile for the thing in the picture.

  Now that they had their back almost to each other, talking became somehow easier. “You realize, you’re now their captain. You shouldn’t be picking through rubbish for parts.”

  “Old habits die hard. There’s still mostly crew in here.” He thumped his chest. “And I’m not a captain. I’m what we call an OTC. Officer in tactical command. It’s just the senior line officer who’s still standing.”

  Shucorion hazarded a nod, but he didn’t seem to be buying that argument.

  Frustrated, Keller’s mind wandered among the blur of details spinning through. “You’re right about the Kauld. Vellyngaith will come back any day now. It’s only because Starfleet technology was more advanced that we managed to do enough damage to beat them off. Even then, I’m still not that sure why they quit fighting after just one photon cluster strike. He must’ve known we’d have nothing left after that, right?”

  “I have no answers. I won’t guess.”

  Time to try again, maybe reframe the question. “You felt the detonation of the photons. What kind of effect do you think it had on them?”

  Behind him, Shucorion hesitated, but Keller got the idea the hesitation was just to do a favor to the ignorant nut who was asking the question. Sure enough, after a moment the grim answer popped up. “We have no way to know.”

  True to his promise, he wouldn’t guess.

  “Any suggestions about when they might come back?” Keller attempted. “Do they have a pattern of strategy that might give me a barometer?”

  “No.”

  “You’re supposed to help me, you know.”

  Shucorion gave his version of an apologetic shrug. “I would like to.”

  “Watch out for that jagged brace.”

  His communicator beeped again, a sound he would be hearing in his sleep for the next fifty years if he didn’t get a break from it soon.

  He snapped the grid open.

  “Keller, Grand Central.”

  “Crewman Riley, sir. We’ve got almost the whole engineering section pieced together and we’re ready to start bonding them. There’s just one problem.”

  “Just one?”

  “We forgot to put in heads.”

  “Are you telling me that the entire engineering section, ten decks through, has no restrooms?”

  “Correct, sir.”

  “What do you think I’m going to say about that?”

  “Probably just what I said.”

  “Well, just flow with that river.”

  “Aye, sir. And, sir, the Blood workers are giving us some trouble.”

  Keller glanced at Shucorion. “What kind of trouble?”<
br />
  “They want to paint the corridors. We tried to explain there isn’t time.”

  “No, we definitely don’t have time for home decorating. Give them something else to do. Tell them they can paint later. Carry on.”

  Exhausted, unshaven, dazed from sheer mental and physical stress, he stopped picking through the wreckage. Though he knew there was a real chance he’d never stand up again if he sat down, he did so on a particularly uncomfortable knot of twisted compartmental sheeting.

  His arms sank to his sides. His shoulders drifted farther down, and he rested his hands on his knees. His knuckles, blurring before him, were scored and bruised, his skin raw. Those poor things looked like the hands of an old, old man. His spine screamed with the sudden relaxation, and all his back muscles seized him, squeezing a wince out of him.

  “We’re not in Kansas anymore, are we?”

  A few tangles away, Shucorion simply asked, “I beg your pardon?”

  “Just thinking of home. . . .”

  “Kansas? Is this a city on your planet?”

  “Hm? Oh—no, it’s a state. But I’m not from there. It’s just a saying we have. I’m from . . . I was raised on a ranch in another state, called New Mexico.” He gazed across the windswept plane beyond the wreck field to the mouth of the valley. “We had a lot of big animals. Cattle, America bison, African elephants, cape buffalo, horses—”

  “Why would you have such animals?” Shucorion asked. “I’ve seen pictures of these things. Very large. Most large land animals on my planet were extinct eons ago. We have few animals larger than ourselves.”

  “My family raises them for various reasons. Meat, tourism, leather products, or sometimes just because we like them. Earth discovered about a century ago that ranching was the only way to keep some of the species from going extinct. Instead, we did what’s called ‘freestyle wildlife management.’ Worked, too. Just by providing the same products in a humane way, we competed the poachers out of business and increased the numbers of animals at the same time. We domesticated some of them, kept others wild or semi-wild on our property, just because we liked having them . . . lot of work. Course, I had five brothers, so we handled it. Three of my brothers are planning to take over someday when my parents retire.”

  “Why would you feed and tend the ones that have no purpose?” Shucorion asked in an endearingly naive way.

  Keller shrugged, feeling suddenly wise and magnanimous. “Success allows you the freedom to just be nice sometimes. Successful businesses have always been the deepest well of charity. Scholarships, donations, sponsorships, grants—all through our history on Earth, businesses have supplied more free-flowing philanthropy than any other force, social or economic, including churches. The more productive you are, the more you’re able to indulge. The more fruitful our ranch became, the more we could provide for animals that had no so-called purpose. We set up a couple of rescue habitats for abused and unwanted alien animals. People bring these bizarre creatures back from space and think they’re good pets, and then the thing grows up. We also set up four scholarships in animal husbandry. One of our graduates is working out here on Belle Terre. So lots of other lives get better because ours do.” He leaned back against a flow fender and nodded to himself. “Yep . . . I approve of success.”

  Shucorion seemed overwhelmed, but offered a humble grin. “I should like to learn more about this success method of life.”

  “I’ll teach you.”

  Though Keller had paused to rest, Shucorion never did. He continued picking through the wreckage. “I would also like to experience such a ranch someday,” he said.

  “Maybe I’ll start one on Belle Terre. Big petting zoo.” Keller dropped the padd and grabbed his head with both hands. “What did I just say! That sounded like I’m planning to stay here or something. Did I say that?”

  “Were you not staying?”

  “I’m slated to rotate back with the Enterprise.” He gazed out over the wind-cut valley floor. Only now, as he sat here and stared at the future, did he realize how his own personal plans had been shredded by these past days’ events. “Peleliu was supposed to stay out here and protect the planet and the olivium . . . but there’s no more Peleliu. There’s only me and whatever I slap together. And Enterprise might never come back. I might actually be stuck here. . . .”

  Shucorion paused in his search. “Then some day beyond, I shall see your ranch.”

  “Yeah, beyond.” With a passive nod, Keller rubbed his face and forgot about any plans he had before this morning. “One thing you learn living on a ranch,” he went on, “is never to run from a charging animal. Stand your ground. He might hit you, but if you run he’ll kill you. On a ranch, there’s a big difference between getting hit and getting dead.” He looked up at Shucorion. “The bull’s still charging. I plan to stand my ground. I agreed to this position and I have to play it out, at least until Kirk gets back. I didn’t like some of the things he told me, but I have to admit he was right. You can yearn for peace and strive toward peace and work for it and aim for peace, but you can’t behave peacefully while you’re having a war. That’s just not the right time to fill your mind with peace and try to act peaceful.”

  Under the crisp eccentric sky of Belle Terre, Shucorion’s complexion became as deeply blue as a pure sapphire stone. His slightly less blue tunic and gray pants contributed to a particularly alien and yet somehow comforting picture as he stood on top of this salvage heap.

  Keller dispensed with formalities or even basic politeness, and just said what he had to say.

  “We’re going to fit together a ship good enough to carry us into space and maybe fight a couple of bursts. Mr. Scott suggested we use the warp core from your ship. I’d like your permission to do that.”

  “Of course,” Shucorion agreed. “We must not waste.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice, even though there was no one to overhear them. He spoke with surprising warmth. “Your orders were to abandon my Plume. Instead you brought him in for me.”

  Self-conscious, Keller simply said, “It stinks to lose a ship.”

  “Yes, it does stick.”

  Keller grinned. “Stink. Smell. Bad.”

  This sure wasn’t easy. He was having to swallow a lot more than his pride. Like his career, which didn’t have any salt on it. And where was he going to get enough data-crystal membranes to hold the optical nanoprocessors?

  Twenty things at a time.

  “You’re not Starfleet,” he continued, “but I’m not sure we are anymore either. I’m just marking time till somebody comes out here to court-martial me. You’re the only one in my circle who’s been a command officer, who has any experience with the people we’ll be fighting, and you have that navigation trick going for you. Your men are awfully hard workers. My people could use the help. They’re welcome in the crew. If they don’t want to stay, I’ll see that they’re delivered back to your planet as soon as we get all this ironed out.”

  He didn’t mention the operative part—if we live.

  “I find that unusually hospitable,” Shucorion said. “I hope they stay.”

  One down. Drawing a long breath, Keller held it and went for the next level.

  “And . . . I need a first officer. Somebody who can operate the Blood warps and maneuver in Gamma Night, and who knows the enemy. There’s something about you that sets you apart from the other Blood. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but I get the feeling you’re different.”

  Shifting under the weight of his own past actions, Keller flinched at his proposal. It seemed awkward and out of order. He hadn’t staged it very well. Shucorion had so far seen him fail to take over when he should have, then let things degenerate to a horror, whack his commanding officer over the noggin, and to top it all off, Keller had offered Shucorion a right cross in return for what was in retrospect a supportive gesture.

  Oh, well, there wasn’t time to redress the past. He forged on.

  “I have to pick somebody my crew can follow if I di
e. After what you’ve seen on our bridge, I can’t blame you if you turn me down flat. I’ve called the rest of my bridge crew—boy, that sounds wild to say right out like that. Anyway, Zane’ll be at the site already, Zoa’s coming from the lower continent where she was training with one of the privateers, and Savannah’ll be arriving on the four o’clock broom . . .”

  If Shucorion was flattered or put off by the prospect, none of that showed in his face. There were a lot of emotions in his eyes, but Keller couldn’t decipher them.

  Finally Shucorion moved off a few ungainly steps and stopped again.

  “It’s very hard for my people to trust,” he said. “For generations we haven’t been able to trust anyone. There have only been Kauld. The few others we met have looked into the Cluster and almost as quickly departed. The Formless gave us dynadrive, which turned out to be a wondrous curse. Now we have nothing but conflict. We have no rest from it as we did before, when our suns cycled away from each other. Now, we are constantly neighbors with All Kauld and must constantly fight. The space between us makes no differ ence anymore. Blood Many have learned that trust is usually betrayed.”

  He paused for a moment, then. Possibly he just didn’t want to come right out and say what he thought.

  Keller was about to let him off the hook when Shucorion raised his head again. “In your people, I have seen something completely new for this cluster. Someday I may understand, but for now, I confess, I remain mystified. Your people do things for the doing of them. You defend what isn’t yours, but don’t claim it afterward. I thought we were conquered. I find myself treated exceptionally well, spoken to with respect, even offered authority. The one who offers . . .”

  Keller’s stomach twisted. What had he been thinking? Why would he assume Shucorion would accept the shame of serving under a man who had bonked his own captain right in front of everybody and even after that practically got the roof pulled down on top of everybody’s head?