STAR TREK®: NEW EARTH - THIN AIR

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Fifteen survivors so far, and Lilian Coates was not among them.

  Chapter Nine

  LILIAN COATES stood at her front window, staring down the road as the rain started, making the siliconic gel shimmer as the water ran through it, pelting the ground not so much in drops, but in a mist. And if the rain was here, so was the lightning that was triggering the explosions.

  She wanted to move back from the window to a place a little safer, to a place where she didn’t have to stand in waist-deep siliconic gel, but she also knew she didn’t dare. If there was a rescue mission going on, she needed to be seen. So for the moment she was going to stay near the window.

  The siliconic gel seemed to be breaking the raindrops apart as they fell, forming thousands of colors seemingly in midair. Shimmering, tiny rainbows that under different circumstances would have been beautiful. At the moment it was just making her more scared, making it clear to her that what was surrounding her home was something very different than normal air.

  She could feel it around her legs as well, and imagine the bubble of oxygen she was breathing getting smaller and smaller.

  She pushed the thought away and stared down the gravel road, between the trees and buildings. Twice in the last few minutes she had been convinced she saw movement down near the main meeting hall, but the trees and other homes along the road blocked most of her line of sight.

  She guessed that it was at least a hundred and fifty running paces down that hill before she could get the transport area in sight, and another good hundred running paces more before she would reach that. Could she run two hundred and fifty steps, in siliconic gel, on one breath?

  She wasn’t sure she could. She had never been very good at holding her breath, and just twenty running steps usually winded her. But if she had to do it to save her life, she was going to try.

  For a few moments it looked as if the rain was going to ease up some. Then suddenly there was a sharp crack as a bolt of lightning smashed into the ground up the hill somewhere behind her home.

  The next instant it felt as if the entire house was jerked upward and then smashed back down again.

  She was tossed into the air with the furniture, and then back and away from the window. She tumbled against the couch and her favorite end table snapped down over her. Instantly her face and hands were completely covered in the spiderweb-like feeling of the siliconic gel.

  Her first response was to scream, but she stopped that, forcing herself to not breathe at all. Instead she just held on to the edge of the couch.

  The rumbling continued and the house shook. The noise was louder than she could have imagined possible, shaking her viciously. She realized that part of the noise she was hearing was smashing glass.

  Some of her windows were breaking.

  Again she forced herself to not scream.

  She kept what little breath she had, biting her lip to keep her mouth closed and using one hand to hold her nose like she was about to jump in a pool. The siliconic gel web-feel covered her face, her neck, her hands. She knew it was impossible to wipe away, but her first instinct was to do just that.

  Quickly, as the shaking lessened, she scrambled to her feet and across the jumble of what had once been her furniture.

  She reached the kitchen counter and climbed up on it as quickly as she could, then reached above for the wooden joists that ran across the kitchen and helped support the roof. She could reach them fairly easily. She pulled hard on one to test if it would hold her. It still felt fairly solid.

  She used the last of her strength to pull herself up, swinging one leg over and then twisting her body on top of the beam so that she rested on the top, with the rough wood between her breasts. She felt her face clear the siliconic gel and the feeling of spiderwebs.

  For the moment she was above it.

  She took a gasping breath and let herself remain facedown on the narrow beam, holding on to it with a grip so tight that splinters cut her hands. The pain of the splinters didn’t matter, as long as she could breathe.

  Another, smaller explosion and earthquake threatened to dump her from the beam, but she managed to ride it out like a child hanging on to a play horse.

  When it stopped she took more deep breaths, then reached her hand down toward the counter. Not more than a foot below her she could feel the spiderweb-feel of the siliconic gel rising toward her. The earthquake must have broken some holes or cracks in the roof as well as the windows, and her air was leaking slowly out above her.

  She didn’t have much time left. She was going to have to figure out a plan and do it fast.

  Below her it looked as if a bar fight had occurred in her living room. Broken furniture and glass were everywhere, and one of her suitcases had broken open, scattering her clothes.

  She forced herself to take a deep breath, then another, then another, doing her best to calm down, if that was possible while hanging on to a wooden beam for dear life.

  “Think, Lilian!” she said out loud. Her voice sounded very contained and didn’t make her feel better at all.

  It looked as if she was going to have no choice but to make a run for it very soon. And the only way to do that was have two lungs full of good air.

  Water dripped through the roof on her back, startling her.

  “Calm down, Lilian,” she said, aloud, her voice again sounding small and muted in the remaining airspace above her kitchen. “You can do this.”

  Her hands gripped the beam even tighter. She might be able to do it, but she sure didn’t want to.

  “Jim, where are you?”

  The loud explosion and earthquake rocked the Enterprise shuttle as if a mad god were angry at it, spinning it, banging it, then spinning it around again. The ten colonists and the three crew were tossed around inside like rag dolls. Luckily, for all of them, it didn’t last long.

  Kirk pushed himself up off the floor, where he had ended up braced against a bulkhead, and glanced at McCoy. “You all right?”

  McCoy pulled off the helmet to his suit and tossed it aside. “If being inside an old amusement park ride without being belted in properly is all right, I guess I’m fine.”

  “Sulu?”

  “Just fine, Captain,” Sulu said, despite the fact that he had sustained a deep cut to the upper arm. Kirk could see the blood coming through the suit.

  Sulu immediately moved to check on the condition of the shuttle’s systems.

  McCoy and Kirk quickly helped the others to get back on their feet as another small quake, nowhere near as severe as the first, struck the shuttle. After it passed, McCoy did a quick check of the survivors while Kirk moved up to help Sulu.

  “Will it fly?” Kirk said, moving to sit in the copilot’s chair. He’d been banged around a lot in a shuttle over the years, but never like that before. Even crash-landing one hadn’t felt that hard.

  He looked out at the ruined colony. A number of homes had collapsed. After that earthquake, it was going to be even more unlikely there were any more survivors in any of the colony buildings. He wasn’t allowing himself to think about losing Lilian.

  “No damage worth mentioning, sir,” Sulu said. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Good,” Kirk said, staring out at the fifty buildings he could see. “How are we going to search all those buildings?”

  “We’re not,” McCoy said, coming up behind him. “We need to get these survivors out of here now.”

  Kirk looked up at McCoy’s intent face. “Bones, we have accounted for seventeen of the thirty-five people lost here. We’re not leaving until we find the other eighteen. The question is how are we going to do it. There are a lot of buildings out there to search, and damn little time to search them.”

  “I’ll help,” a woman’s voice came from behind Bones. She moved up beside the doctor and brushed the long, gray hair from her face. She had to be sixty if she was a day, and her skin tone was pale. But there was a fire in her blue eyes that Kirk liked.

  “I don’t think so,” McCoy said.


  She gave him a soily look. “Give me an oxygen mask and tell me where to search. I don’t want to go back out in that stuff, but for my neighbors, I will.”

  “Yeah, count me in,” a man’s voice came from the back. Two or three others also volunteered.

  “Captain, these people have been through enough,” McCoy said. “We need to get them out of here and now. Two have broken bones, two others may have concussions, and all are cut and bruised.”

  Kirk nodded, then looked at the older woman. “What’s your name?”

  “Francie Evans,” she said.

  “It’s an honor meeting you, Francie,” Kirk said, taking the firm grasp of the woman.

  “Just glad to be meeting anyone at the moment,” she said, smiling.

  Kirk nodded. It was going to take help to find the rest, and they needed to move fast if they were going to find anyone alive. He turned to the control board of the shuttle and clicked on the communications link. “Kirk to Benny. Are you out there, son?”

  “Right here, Captain,” Benny said.

  “How far away are you? And do you have enough fuel to return for some passengers?”

  “Take a look out your window, Captain,” Benny’s voice said, coming back strong.

  Kirk glanced to his right as the colony transport did a quick turn and landed expertly right were it had left a few minutes before.

  “No one listens anymore, do they?” McCoy said, clearly disgusted.

  “We were following your adventure on your suit radios and I knew you were going to need more help when you found the ten survivors, so I turned around. Sure hate being back in this creepy stuff. But I haven’t opened up the doors yet.”

  “How’s your air supply?”

  “We got about ten minutes on the shuttle supply,” Benny said. “So if you want our help, when I open the doors you’re going to need to bring some of those air bottles you were talking about.”

  Kirk glanced around at McCoy, then smiled.

  “Told you that kid reminded me of you,” McCoy said, shaking his head in clear disgust.

  “All right, Benny,” Kirk said, smiling at McCoy. “We’re going to be bringing you the wounded to take to the canyon. Any of your passengers want to stay and help search, they are more than welcome.”

  “All of them do, sir,” Benny said. “If I wasn’t flying this thing, I’d stay as well.”

  Kirk nodded. “Great. Let’s get going. If anyone is alive out there, they’re running out of time.”

  Ten minutes later Benny lifted off again carrying five of the wounded survivors. The other eleven, plus Sulu, McCoy, and Kirk, were going to spread out and search. Each carried extra oxygen and a communicator to call for help.

  Kirk stood and watched for the fifteen seconds it took for the shuttle to clear the area. They all did. As it turned out, those fifteen seconds were very important seconds.

  The siliconic gel had finally reached the level of the beam. Lilian Coates forced herself to turn and sit up, taking deep, long breaths for as long as she could. She was almost out of time and she knew it. The siliconic gel was coming up fast and in less than a minute it would be over her head even if she was standing on the beam.

  She had to act now.

  Taking long, deep breaths, she forced herself to stay calm and get as much oxygen in her lungs as she could possibly get. When she dropped off the beam, she figured she had to run down the hill to one of the bigger buildings. With luck, there would be people down there near the transport pad starting search parties, but without luck, she had to make it into the town meeting hall and up to the second floor at least, all on one lungful of air.

  She wasn’t sure if she could make it to her garden while holding her breath, let alone that far. But she had to try. Staying here was no longer an option.

  After a dozen more deep breaths, she took one large one, filling her cheeks and mouth with as much as she could, then rolled off the beam, swinging down to the countertop below as if she had done the move a hundred times. More splinters cut her hands, but that was much better than the feeling of spiderwebs.

  The siliconic gel covered her face and arms and head like a scratchy blanket, trying to creep into her nose and mouth.

  She held her nose closed and jumped off the counter, then went out the front door at a run.

  The rain had stopped, but everything looked dark. And her eyes didn’t want to work that well, acting as if dust was constantly hitting them.

  She could feel her natural desire to breathe already pounding at her as she jogged into the street and started down the hill. Running in the siliconic gel was like having weights holding your entire body back. It was possible, but not easy. The siliconic gel just didn’t want to let her move fast.

  After twenty steps she thought her lungs were going to burst, so to ease a little pressure she did what she used to do as a girl while swimming under water and blew out slightly.

  That helped for another ten steps, clearing her nose. But it wasn’t enough.

  She blew out a little more, but now her lungs were telling her to breathe. She wasn’t going to listen just yet.

  She shoved hard into the siliconic gel, fighting it, pushing it aside.

  Ahead she could see that the roof of the large meeting hall was broken, with a large hole in the side. That wasn’t going to have any air trapped in there.

  The demand for oxygen was getting worse, so she ran faster, racing against the need for air.

  Maybe she should duck into one of these houses, see if there was air trapped in them. That would give her a chance to make it farther.

  Then ahead of her she could hear a rumble start up.

  For a second she wasn’t sure if it was just in her own ears, or another earthquake coming, or a transport. She had to believe it was a transport ahead.

  As she went past two of the last buildings on the left she could suddenly see the transport area. There was the Enterprise shuttle, and a transport there, just starting to take off.

  The transport noise was loud now.

  And there were people, standing around watching the shuttle, all with air masks over their faces.

  Jim was one of them. She knew his broad shoulders and stance anywhere.

  She was still seventy-five paces away.

  Seventy-five long, long paces.

  Too far for how much air she had left.

  But she kept running.

  Step. Step. Step, one foot in front of the other.

  Step.

  Step.

  They were all still an impossible distance away.

  No one was looking at her.

  She finally shouted. “Jim!”

  But she didn’t have enough air to make it a very loud shout.

  The siliconic gel filled her mouth, choked her like a ball of cotton jammed down her throat and into her nose.

  Run! Keep running!

  She couldn’t.

  She dropped to her knees, coughing, spitting, trying to will herself to not take in any of the siliconic gel, but her body had ideas of its own.

  She had to breathe.

  She couldn’t let herself.

  She had to breathe.

  She had to!

  She opened her mouth and took a deep, gulping breath. But it was more of the siliconic gel instead of oxygen and the silicon substance filled her lungs and nose and throat.

  She choked and dropped flat on the ground.

  Around her the blackness rushed in, blocking out the light of the day.

  She couldn’t go like this. Jim was close.

  She had to get to him.

  Fight! Fight!

  With one final bit of energy, she pushed herself to her knees and tried to move toward where Jim stood.

  He still wasn’t looking at her. His back was turned.

  She no longer had any fight left in her.

  The blackness took her completely and she didn’t even feel the gravel of the road smash into her face.

  Chapter Ten


  “JIM!”

  McCoy’s muffled shout through his spacesuit spun Kirk around. He followed where McCoy was pointing and turned just in time to see Lilian fall face-first onto the road and lie there.

  At a run he headed for her. Fighting the thickness of the siliconic gel felt almost like running in a swimming pool. It seemed to take forever to reach her, and the entire time he didn’t take his gaze from her.

  The entire time she didn’t move.

  It seemed like an eternity before he reached her. He knelt beside her and rolled her over. Her skin was pasty white and blood was seeping from cuts on her checks and forehead.

  He quickly slipped an oxygen mask over her face and checked for a pulse. There wasn’t one.

  He started CPR, but McCoy pushed him aside when he finally lumbered up. “Won’t work. She has the siliconic gel in her lungs. Need to get her to the shuttle at once.”

  All Kirk could do was nod. If there was no oxygen getting to her blood because her lungs were clogged, there was no need to pump the blood. He picked her up in his arms like a child and headed at a slow jog toward the shuttle.

  Under normal conditions, he might have struggled with the extra weight, but at this point he didn’t notice. He just kept glancing at her face against his shoulder.

  McCoy somehow managed to stay at his side, even in the bulky suit.

  “Start the search, Mr. Sulu,” Kirk managed to say between panting breaths through the air mask as he passed his helmsman.

  Sulu nodded and turned to the colonists who had been watching the events. By the time Kirk reached the shuttle with Lilian and McCoy, the volunteers were spreading out.

  Kirk got her inside and McCoy stripped off his helmet and knelt beside her. “I’ve got to get her back to sickbay,” he said as he checked her quickly with his medical scanner. “Only chance I have of clearing her lungs. The siliconic gel is like having glass dust in them.”

  Kirk nodded. He knew exactly what he was going to have to do. With one last look at Lilian’s deathly white face, he dropped into the pilot’s chair and prepared the shuttle for liftoff. Thirty seconds later he had the shuttle above the siliconic gel layer.