STAR TREK®: NEW EARTH - THIN AIR

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Spock stood for a moment, then said, “I would say approximately sixteen seconds, Captain.”

  “Enough time?” Kirk asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Spock said.

  Kirk laughed. “They aren’t going to be happy when their information doesn’t come through. Mr. Sulu, move us into position directly over the area of Belle Terre Mr. Spock indicated. Then stand ready with phasers.”

  “Understood, sir,” Sulu said.

  “Mr. Spock, I’ll leave the timing and targeting up to you.”

  “I’ll feed the information directly into the targeting system,” Spock said. “Set it to fire automatically.”

  “Perfect,” Kirk said.

  “Uhura,” Kirk said, thinking ahead to the point after Gamma Night, “connect me with the Royal York and Hunter’s Moon. We’ve got an attack on an asteroid to plan.”

  Somewhere on that asteroid which the Kauld military had been so nice to point out to them, Kirk was certain, was the solution to stopping the nanoassemblers. He was going to get it if he had to go through the entire Kauld fleet in the process.

  Actually, the way he felt right now, going through them might feel damn good.

  Chapter Twelve

  TEGAN WELCH turned out to be a much better dinner companion than Captain Bill Skaerbaek would have ever imagined. Just after Len Sterling died, he had stopped by the ward and asked her to join him for dinner. At first she had declined, saying she wouldn’t be very good company at the moment.

  But he had insisted. He knew it would be hard for her to say no to the captain of the ship she was about to steal a shuttle from. And he had been right. Finally she had smiled and nodded yes to his invitation.

  The dinner was his way of trying to tell her he suspected what she was going to try. And maybe convince her, without ever tipping his hand, that she shouldn’t try it.

  It didn’t work out that way exactly. In fact, it didn’t work out even close to what he had in mind.

  He had decided to have the dinner in his quarters, just the two of them. Since his wife had died, five years before, no woman had set foot in his quarters for anything social. He really wasn’t thinking of this as social, either. More along the lines of duty, since there was no way he could let Tegan Welch steal a Starfleet shuttle.

  He had become suspicious when she had made a walk-around of the shuttles during her first few hours on board. Then when she had gone back to the hallway near the shuttles four times, he had finally sent Ensign Harrow to see what she really wanted. Again, Tegan’s interest had been the shuttles. And considering that her son was so sick, and she felt that getting him away from Belle Terre was his only hope, Skaerbaek didn’t really blame her. He might have been thinking of doing the same thing in her position. He just couldn’t let her do it from his ship.

  When he opened the door to greet her, Tegan Welch looked beautiful, in a very clean, almost plain way. She was only a few years younger than he was, yet looked younger. And more tired. She had her long hair pulled back tight, accenting the perfect features of her face. She had on black dress slacks and a simple white blouse that gave her a very soft look.

  “Thank you, Captain,” she said as she entered, “for the wonderful invitation.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, indicating she should make herself comfortable on the couch.

  “Wow, what smells so good?” Instead of going to the couch, she turned instead toward the small kitchen. A real kitchen was a luxury, of course, but the captaincy had its privileges and he had his hobbies.

  He had decided to try cooking lasagna, a dish he hadn’t done in years. He figured if it came out bad, the worst it would taste like was plain tomato sauce and noodles.

  “Used to be one of my specialties,” he said, following her into the kitchen. “Deep-dish lasagna.”

  “Used to be?” she asked, glancing back at him with a smile. “From the smell of this, I’d say it still is.”

  “Well, thank you,” he said, feeling suddenly very much at ease. He found it interesting how she made him comfortable even when she came to his quarters.

  “How about a glass of wine?” he asked, pointing to a bottle on the counter.

  “You’ve thought of everything,” she said, again laughing. “I’d love a glass.”

  “Not everything,” he said. “I couldn’t come up with a way to make the garlic bread.”

  “But you have salad, right?” she asked, boldly opening the refrigerator storage area door. “And Italian dressing, I see.”

  He laughed and from that moment onward, the evening was very, very much off the course he had intended it to take. She helped him with the dinner, helped set the small table, and helped keep the conversation light and full of laughter.

  Finally, over the soily dishes and a second glass of wine, she looked at him seriously. “So what happened to your wife? I see her pictures, but no sign of her living here.”

  “Died five years ago,” he said. “Radiation poisoning from an accident. She worked in engineering.”

  Tegan nodded. “She must have been someone special to be the wife of a Starfleet captain.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t a captain when we were married,” he said, laughing. “Just a regular old lieutenant. I had just made captain when she died. What about your husband?”

  “Also dead,” Tegan said. “A month after Charles was born. A freak transport accident. He was a Starfleet ensign at the time.”

  “So you signed up for this colony on your own, with just Charles?” he asked. The idea of her doing that for some reason surprised him. She was a very impressive person.

  “Sure did,” she said. “Wanted a change of pace, a new home, some new memories. I didn’t expect to come here, though, and lose my son.”

  “You haven’t lost him yet,” Skaerbaek said.

  This time she laughed without humor. It wasn’t a pretty sound, filled with bitterness and just barely covering her anger. “With Len dying today, it’s only a matter of a day or two. The only thing I can do to save Charles is get him away from the subspace influence of the olivium. We both know that. Even Dr. Akins knows that, but isn’t doing anything about it.”

  He leaned forward slightly. “And what would you have him do?”

  She also leaned forward, as if she was about to tell him a secret. Even up close, her skin was smooth, her eyes deep and full of intelligence.

  “I would have him move this entire ship of yours just outside this system. A quarter of a light-year out for just two days would be enough to give my son and the other patients time to recover.”

  “Interesting,” Skaerbaek said, not backing away.

  “Yes, it is,” she asked calmly. “There are still four lives involved, and no other patients on this ship. The shielding idea isn’t working, clearly, so the solution to save their lives is easy. Move the ship a short distance. That’s all.”

  He stared into her eyes for a moment until finally she sat back.

  He did the same. Slowly, thinking.

  “What really amazes me,” she said, staring at him intently, pushing her arguement, “is that in all my years in space, I’ve never seen such a callous disregard for human life before. And on a hospital ship besides. It’s as if Governor Pardonnet wants my son dead. But that couldn’t be possible, now could it? Why would anyone want to kill a seven-year-old boy?”

  At that moment he knew she was right. Dr. Akins’s most recent report confirmed that. Not about the governor, but she was still clearly, painfully right.

  He forced himself to take another slow sip of wine, never letting his gaze leave hers. Then he set the glass down and pushed his chair back. He extended his hand. “Come with me.”

  She took his hand and stood, her firm, warm skin sending electric tingles through his arm.

  “Let’s go have a talk with Dr. Akins right now.”

  “I doubt that’s going to do any good,” she said, her voice shaking with the anger clearly just under the surface.

  This time it was his tur
n to laugh. “Oh, with me asking the questions, we just might get some different answers.”

  “Captain,” she said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “One minute until Gamma Night,” Sulu said.

  Kirk stared at the big screen in front of him. It was showing the land areas of Belle Terre below the Enterprise that could possibly hold a laser relay station for a Kauld observation post. It was only the most northern area of the planet’s largest continent, and a small chain of frozen islands. The entire land area was covered in snow and in places a thick layer of ice.

  They had done a preliminary scan of the area, but found nothing. Spock had suggested that was caused by heavy shielding and asked permission to make sure they penetrated the shielding with the phaser fire.

  Kirk had told him to do what he considered best.

  So for the last twenty minutes they had just waited.

  If those Kauld warships were really guarding an observation post, and if Mr. Spock’s theory that the observation post got its information by laser during Gamma Night, then in just a few seconds they were going to melt some ice on the surface when they destroyed that station.

  “Thirty seconds to Gamma Night,” Sulu said.

  Kirk turned to Spock. “Everything ready?”

  “Ready, Captain,” Spock said. “I’ll show whatever activity we have on the screen.”

  “Mr. Sulu,” Kirk asked, “are the phasers armed and ready?”

  “At Mr. Spock’s command, sir,” Sulu said.

  The next few seconds ticked by slowly. Kirk watched the screen, waiting. If they were wrong about any number of assumptions, nothing was going to happen. But as Mr. Spock had said, the percentages were that they were correct.

  “Energy spike on the surface,” Spock said.

  On the screen Kirk could see a bright red spot appear near the edge of a vast ice field. Suddenly bright red lines streaked at it from twenty different directions around the planet. Those lines showed communications coming into the energy location.

  They had been right. The Kauld had been gathering data from all over Belle Terre and sending it every Gamma Night.

  The familiar sound of the Enterprise phasers firing filled the bridge. Twice.

  Pause.

  Then twice more.

  Pause.

  Then twice more.

  Spock was taking no chances on not destroying the target, which was fine with Kirk.

  “Target destroyed,” Spock said.

  “We’re in Gamma Night,” Sulu announced.

  The screen in front of him went fuzzy.

  Kirk hated Gamma Night, but at the moment he bet there was a group of Kauld on an asteroid that were going to hate it even more over the next ten hours.

  “Play back what just happened,” Kirk said. “I want close-ups if we have them.”

  “We do,” Spock said as the screen showed a barren ice-covered small hill on an otherwise flat ice plain.

  “That bump the relay station?” Kirk asked.

  “It was,” Spock said.

  An instant later the camera showed the first two phasers striking the station in slow motion, melting the ice down to the building and then through the thick shielding to the machinery inside.

  It hadn’t been a very large building, but big enough for a buried and shielded power plant large enough to fire a laser across the system to the asteroid.

  The next Enterprise phaser strikes caused a massive explosion of equipment. Kirk figured they must have hit the power plant on that shot.

  The last two phaser strikes melted the entire mess down into a metal puddle that steamed in the cold air.

  “Well done, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said, smiling.

  “Thank you, sir,” Spock said.

  “Let’s be ready to move at that asteroid the moment Gamma Night lifts,” Kirk said. “I want to be sitting on their front step when they wake up.”

  “Agreed,” Spock said. “I’m going to return now to my research on stopping the nanoassemblers.”

  Kirk nodded as Spock headed for the lift. Ten long hours to wait. What was he going to do?

  He sat there for a moment staring at the image of the melted Kauld communications station, then stood.

  “I’ll be in sickbay if you need me,” he said to Uhura.

  “Understood, Captain,” she said. “I’ll have some dinner brought to you.”

  “Thank you,” Kirk said. “Better have enough for Dr. McCoy as well. I doubt he’s left sickbay.”

  * * *

  Yanorada stared at his two assistants, then back at his blank screens. “What do you mean the laser missed us?” His voice was as controlled as he could make it. “How could a computer-guided laser miss us?”

  “Something must have gone wrong with the targeting, sir,” Relaagith said. “Just a fraction of a degree off and the laser would miss us. It is the only explanation.”

  “I don’t think it’s the only one,” Yanorada shouted. “Maybe it’s the one you hope will explain the situation, but it is clearly not the only possible explanation.”

  Relaagith smartly said nothing.

  Yanorada stared at the blank screens, trying to get himself to calm down. This was to be the Blind where the results of his attack on Belle Terre would become clear. If the timing of the creation of the siliconic gel had occurred as he had expected, there would have been at least three major eruptions around the planet that he could have studied for the next ten hours.

  He could have also seen images of humans dying under his wonderful invention.

  And he needed to know the human reaction to the siliconic gel. Were they making preparations to leave the system? Or did they even understand what was happening yet?

  “Sir,” Ayaricon said, stepping a half step closer, “I will be able to send a signal to the laser station right before the next Blind, to realign the laser tracking systems. The information missed this time has been stored and can be studied next Blind as well.”

  Yanorada glared at his second assistant. “Thank you for telling me what I already know,” he said, coldly. “But has it occurred to either of you idiots that maybe the trouble with the laser system was caused by the humans?”

  “How would they have discovered it?” Relaagith asked, clearly shocked at the idea.

  “Maybe, just maybe,” Yanorada said, “they are smarter than you are. Which wouldn’t take much, I might add.”

  Again both his assistants had the brains enough to remain quiet. If they were smart, they wouldn’t say another word to him for the next ten hours.

  He sat back and stared at the blank screens. Information should have been pouring across them. Instead, ten long hours of nothing faced him like a wall, with no way around, through, or over.

  He was not in a good mood. It was going to be a very long Blind.

  Chapter Thirteen

  TEGAN WAS SHOCKED when Captain Skaerbaek took her by the hand and went in search of Dr. Akins. The dinner had been fun, his company nice. And under other circumstances, she might have been interested in him. But right now her first concern had to be her son.

  Suddenly, after she had all but accused the captain of not caring about human life, he had seemingly become concerned. She wasn’t sure if she had converted him to her way of thinking, or if he was just out to prove her wrong. But she was willing to go along to see which it was going to be.

  They found Dr. Akins in the lounge area, reading, his feet up on a cushion. He was alone and had a snifter half full of a golden drink beside him on a stand. The look of surprise on his face when she came in with the captain was priceless. It was clearly not something he would have ever expected, or even thought about except maybe in a bad nightmare.

  Dr. Akins was a short man, with square shoulders and a perpetual frown. Tegan had hated him from the moment he had started treating her son, and she wasn’t sure why until after he started telling her the same things that the colony doctors had said. Be patient.

  Her son didn’t have the time
for her to be patient.

  “Captain,” Akins said, quickly standing. “Ms. Welch, what a surprise. May I get you a drink?”

  “I think we’re fine,” Captain Skaerbaek said coldly. “Please, sit.”

  Dr. Akins did as he was told and Skaerbaek grabbed a chair and slid it up right in front of Akins and sat down as well, leaving Tegan standing a few steps away. Clearly he didn’t want her to be part of this conversation, and that was fine by her. She was much more interested in listening anyway.

  “I heard that Len Sterling died today,” Skaerbaek said.

  Akins nodded.

  “From what, exactly, Doctor?”

  “Heart failure,” Akins said, staring at the captain, then glancing up at Tegan. “It’s in my report, Captain.”

  “I know that,” Skaerbaek said. “I’ve read it. But I have what I call an old captain’s hunch that the entire story isn’t in that report. Am I right?”

  Tegan watched as Akins seemed taken back by what the captain had just said.

  “I’m not exactly sure what you are saying, Captain,” Akins said, clearly not happy with the direction the conversation was heading in. “My reports are always complete. You know that.”

  “Why are these patients on this ship, Doctor?” the captain asked. “Why was Sterling here?”

  “A seeming allergy to olivium ore,” Akins said. “The colony doctors believe the shielding of this ship, and its location in orbit, might help their conditions.”

  “And Sterling died of a complication from that olivium-related allergy?” Skaerbaek asked.

  Akins nodded. “Heart failure.”

  “And the others face the same fate, including the Welch boy? Am I right?”

  Akins again nodded without looking up at Tegan. It was one of the reasons she hated the little doctor so much. He couldn’t face her, couldn’t lie to her face. He knew her son was going to die and kept telling her there was still hope.

  “So is the shielding helping their condition?”

  Tegan forced herself to remain very still. This was exactly the question she wanted to ask. Having the captain ask it was much, much better.