Crisis On Centaurus

by Brad Ferguson

  The Vulcan took a quick look at the shuttle's coordinate plotter and mentally translated the figures onto the face of the map. Spock put a finger in the lower right quadrant of the map and showed it to Chekov. "Here we are, Ensign."

  The young Russian took a quick look. "This used to be a protected park area?" he asked. He looked down at the flattened, charred landscape.

  "Yes. It was called Athena Preserve. I believe Dr. McCoy maintained a residence here at one time."

  "It's not there now," Chekov pointed out unnecessarily. Nothing was there.

  Spock consulted the map again. "We appear to be two kilometers from the southernmost boundary of the spaceport." He looked at his board. "Radiation readings high, but still within safety limits. Outside temperature twenty-three standard degrees, and there are brisk winds from the north; I cannot determine a true wind velocity while we are in flight. Mr. Chekov, I suggest we cruise slowly over the spaceport to see what we might see."

  "Yes, sir. But I don't think there'll be much to see; ve're now passing ower the lip of a crater."

  And that was all there was below them for the next three kilometers—the glassy floor of a hole in the world, burned and chewed out in one unimaginable, terrible instant. The crater looked to be several hundred meters deep at its lowest point, but it was hard to tell; water had collected in it already. One day this might be a small, strangely circular—and dangerously radioactive—inland sea.

  Columbus flew on slowly.

  They passed the northeastern rim of the crater.

  Spock was more watchful now; the Defense Center was nearby. Captain Kirk had been told that repair crews had been sent to fix the defense computers, but Spock saw no compelling reason to accept this. There was no direct evidence that the crews had ever arrived: The computers were still not fixed. It was too bad. Spock would have liked to rely on the crews' landed flitters as a clear landmark for the location of the entrance to the defense installation.

  Spock did not want his party to spend very much time on the surface, even in pressure suits. The Vulcan wanted to find the entrance to the underground complex quickly; being below the surface would afford a great deal of protection against radiation, and that would gain them more time to solve the problem of the Defense Center.

  But there were no landmarks left … not a lake, not a bridge, not a road. Dead reckoning would have to do—that, and a little guesswork. Spock looked again at the coordinates on his board and translated them to his map. The Defense Center site was not more than three hundred meters from their present position. "Mr. Chekov, please hover. We're very near the site, and I must get our bearings."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  As Columbus stood by, Spock thought. There was nothing but rubble below and no evidence of any repair flitters—but wasn't there a little less rubble over that way, about two hundred and fifty meters to port? And wouldn't something like a defense site be relatively "unbuilt," with most of its facilities underground? Or was the clearing simply an accidental cancellation of blast patterns in one very small area?

  There was only one way to find out. "There, Mr. Chekov," Spock said, pointing. "Overfly that area very slowly, please." Chekov nodded and complied; Columbus dropped closer to the ground, now moving about a meter per second, at a height no more than two meters above the scattered debris. Rawlings, Hudson and Iziharry left their seats and moved forward to stand behind Chekov and Spock. Connie Iziharry laid a trembling, pressure-gloved hand on Chekov's left shoulder; he never felt it. The five of them, together, watched the devastation flow slowly around them as they floated above it.

  A few minutes later Hudson cried out, pointing. "There, at ten o'clock!"

  Then they all saw a twisted, blackened sign welcoming visitors to Planetary Defense Command Headquarters. There was the remnant of a heavily protected entrance, and Chekov landed Columbus precisely in front of it.

  The massive doors which should have shut the Defense Center off from the outside world upon detection of the spaceport explosion hadn't worked. They were still open, both sides of them scorched with terrible heat. The Columbus party walked on through, with Spock in the lead. The Vulcan's DayBrite lantern picked out heaps of rubble here and there—and, every so often, a corpse in military garb. The center had remained open to heat and radiation, and there had been no warning at all. The dead military personnel were the first casualties the five from the Enterprise had seen on Centaurus.

  "There can't be anyone alive down here, can there?" Connie Iziharry asked.

  "Perhaps lower down," Spock said doubtfully. "There may have been other protected areas … but, as we saw, the primary doors were open."

  "Is it possible someone opened them after the explosion?" Rawlings wondered.

  "I think not," Spock said. "Both sides of the doors were affected by great heat, and we saw rubble from the outside down the entryway. It could only have been thrown that far by the blast."

  "Oh. Of course."

  Hudson spoke up. "If that's so, then I wonder what condition we'll find the equipment here in. I thought we might be able to use some of the stuff they had here already."

  Spock considered it. "Some might well be usable. Such electronics as we will find here are sometimes delicate, but I assume they were produced according to military specifications. I would also assume the central command center was protected somehow, although I cannot be sure those protective measures were effective."

  "I vonder how many personnel vere stationed here," Chekov said.

  "I don't know precisely, Ensign," Spock answered. "However, I once visited a similar defense installation on Big Top. That one had some forty officers and five hundred enlisted personnel."

  Iziharry waved her medical tricorder. "There's really too much tachyonic interference to get a decent reading here, Mr. Spock. But I can tell you there's no one alive within fifty meters of this spot, except us."

  "I do not expect survivors, Nurse Iziharry."

  There was silence after that. The five of them trudged on and down into the Defense Center, Spock's lonely light leading the way.

  Chapter Eleven:

  Mclverton

  KIRK AND SULU relaxed as Galileo streaked westward at supersonic speed across New America. It was a beautiful day. Sulu flew the little ship just a few hundred meters above the clouds. Kirk drank in the warm, pleasant light of the suns, filtered to gentle warmness by Galileo's hyperpolarized viewports.

  It had felt awfully good to take the pressure suits off. They lay limply on the aft deck behind the passenger seats, looking like a couple of rubbery people with all the air let out.

  Sulu stretched in his pilot's seat and relaxed. "I remember a day in Hawaii like this," he said.

  "Hmm," Kirk grunted pleasurably. "Sometimes I miss this sort of thing a lot." He closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth. It was blissfully quiet in the cabin, since they were supersonic, and Kirk hadn't had much sleep lately … mmmmm …

  "Captain!" Sulu said. Kirk came instantly awake. "Sensors show unknown craft approaching us. Six bogies, tight formation. Bearing two five two, coming up from below. Fast!"

  Damn! Kirk thought. "All right, Mr. Sulu. Let's meet 'em. I'll try to raise 'em on the radio." Too bad shuttles aren't armed. Add that to the wish list, Jim.

  "Attention, unknown craft. Attention," Kirk said into the microphone. "This is Captain James T. Kirk of the Federation starship Enterprise, aboard shuttlecraft Galileo. Come in, please."

  There was a pause and a burst of static, and then a crackling voice. "Galileo, this is Colonel Duncan Smith, commander of the Thirty-sixth Air Wing, Centaurus Defense Command. Welcome to Centaurus, sir; glad to see you made it. We will provide escort to McIverton. Over to you."

  "Thank you, Colonel," Kirk replied. "Glad to be here. We'll follow you in. Kirk out."

  "Roger on that, Captain. Smith out."

  He thumbed the radio to inactive status and spoke to Sulu. "Interesting. They seemed to be waiting for us."

  Sulu frowned. "T
hat's not necessarily bad. Don't Federation governments usually provide an escort of honor for a starship captain arriving by shuttle?"

  "Yes—but I specifically told Erikkson I didn't want one; this isn't a ceremonial call. He's shoving an escort down our throats anyway. I don't like that much, Mr. Sulu; it makes me think we're being herded."

  "That may be the idea, Captain."

  "That's what I'm afraid of."

  A moment later, a squadron of six combat jets took up a precise formation around, over and under Galileo, providing a standard escort of honor. Kirk could not help noticing that the shuttlecraft was effectively boxed in. He also couldn't help noticing the sleek air-to-air missiles slung under the wings of each jet, a pair to port and another to starboard. Of course, it was normal enough for a warplane to carry such weapons … but the sight of them disturbed Kirk nevertheless. He felt vulnerable, and he didn't like that at all.

  The shuttle and the jets continued flying in formation above the clouds, across the rest of New America, all the way west to McIverton. Kirk no longer enjoyed the trip.

  About an hour after rendezvous, the seven craft dipped below the clouds just south of the new capital and banked to starboard, beginning their approach to Government Field. The shortwave radio crackled. "Here's where we leave you, Galileo. Your bearing to the field is niner-two degrees; pick up the tower on four five three kilohertz. Been a pleasure, Captain Kirk. Smith out."

  "Thank you, Colonel. Galileo out." The six jets peeled away from the shuttle as Kirk twiddled a frequency dial on the shortwave console; there had been no time for Scotty to construct a digital readout, so Kirk searched back and forth within a narrow range for 453 kHz. Finally he heard something, and upped the gain.

  It was a woman's voice, brisk and businesslike. "Galileo, this is Government Field Tower. Welcome to McIverton, Captain Kirk. You are cleared to land on the president's flitterpad; we will feed you a directional cue over this frequency. Please let us know when you have visual contact; the pad is marked with a red target. Please acknowledge."

  Kirk pushed the talkback. Now I know exactly how Uhura feels, he thought. "Tower, this is Galileo. We are, er, thirteen kilometers south of you, bearing niner-two. Altitude eighteen hundred meters and descending. Send us the cue at your pleasure. Kirk out."

  A not unpleasant tone came from the shortwave speaker. As long as Kirk and Sulu could hear it, it meant that Galileo was on a correct heading for the flitterpad; if they lost the tone, Government Field Tower would issue a course correction, which Sulu would follow. But Sulu was very good.

  "There's the field," Sulu said.

  And it was. Government Field looked like nothing more than the usual civilian airfield one came across on any sufficiently advanced Federation planet—except that this one had an unusual amount of traffic parked in its holding areas. Whatever government was left after the destruction of New Athens had coalesced here, on the other coast, and there had, of course, not yet been time to expand the field's facilities. Kirk did not envy the air traffic controllers their jobs. The arrival of Galileo must be causing them some headaches; even with a heavy volume of air traffic in the area, the shuttle had been cleared for landing immediately.

  But the landing priority given Galileo—the normal sort of priority given any Federation craft bearing a visitor of Kirk's rank or higher—did not reassure the captain. Kirk still sensed an essential wrongness about what was going on in McIverton. He had no justification for that feeling, as yet. But it was there … and such feelings had served him in good stead more than once.

  "Coming in for a landing, Captain," Sulu reported.

  Galileo was nearing the presidential flitterpad, a concrete square about ten meters on a side. There was a target in its center—six concentric red circles forming a bull's-eye. Kirk could see three large black vehicles parked just beyond the safety line. Flitters? wondered Kirk. They don't look much like—oh! Limousines; I've seen pictures. Well, I'll be. We're getting the full treatment. Kirk had rarely ever seen an automobile. Advanced Federation planets still used them on diplomatic occasions, in the same kind of forced anachronism that once had Earth royalty still riding to their coronations and weddings in horse-drawn carriages more than a century after the introduction of the automobile.

  Kirk had been in a car just once, on Iotia, a planet whose inhabitants had drawn their entire social and ethical structure from a book on twentieth-century gangster rule in Chicago. He had even tried to pilot the thing—with mixed results, but he'd enjoyed the experience. Despite his present misgivings, Kirk was looking forward to a ride in a car.

  The pad was under them, now. "Grounding," Sulu said. The whine of the shuttle's impulse engines began to die away as the Enterprise helmsman gradually bled power from them, allowing the boxy craft to drift downward easily. Kirk watched as buildings and other structures began to rise into view in his window.

  A light went green on the pilot's status board. "Landing legs down and locked," Sulu reported; a few seconds later there was a negligible bump. "Landed, Captain," Sulu said. "Hope you had a pleasant flight. Please exit from the side door, and remember to take your valuables."

  Kirk smiled back. "Nice job, Lieutenant. Thank you." The captain looked out the window; Sulu had oriented the nose of Galileo to face the three parked limousines. There was a small group of men waiting there. "Look—a reception committee. And me without my dress uniform."

  "Perhaps we could wear the pressure suits instead," Sulu said jokingly.

  "Not on your life. Let's crack the hatch and meet the people, Mr. Sulu."

  It was early in the local morning, but already the light of the two major Centaurian suns was dazzling. It danced on the white concrete runways and flitterpads, darting painfully into Kirk's eyes. Knew I forgot something, fumed Kirk. Sunglasses! I should have remembered. Squinting, he and Sulu walked down Galileo's landing ramp and over to the welcoming party. A tall, balding man of about forty had his hand out; Kirk shook it firmly.

  "Greetings, Captain Kirk, and welcome to Centaurus. I'm Thaddeus Hayes, chief of protocol. Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir."

  "Thank you," Kirk said. "Allow me to introduce Lieutenant Sulu, my pilot and confidential aide." Sulu allowed no surprise at his sudden status as aide to appear on his face; he had learned long ago to simply go along with anything Captain Kirk might say. Sulu shook Hayes's proffered hand and wondered what a confidential aide was supposed to do. Probably remain very quiet when the captain's talking, Sulu decided.

  Hayes turned and indicated two much younger men. "These two gentlemen are my chief deputies: Roland Samuels and Winston Churchill McKnight." More hands were shaken. "I think that completes the introductions, Captain—oh, I forgot. You'll probably want these." Hayes stuck out a hand, and McKnight gave him two leatherette objects. "Sunglasses," Hayes explained. "I trust they'll fit you both … and if you wear yours, we'll be able to put ours on, too." Hayes smiled apologetically. "Please forgive my bluntness, but it is terribly bright today."

  Kirk grinned. "No problem, Mr. Hayes." He slipped the glasses out of the leatherette holder and put them on; the hyperpolarized lenses did much to cut the glare. "Much better. We appreciate your thoughtfulness."

  Hayes and the other two men slipped their sunglasses on. "You'll find sunglasses are pretty necessary items here, Captain," the protocol chief said.

  "Yes. I must have a dozen pairs of these things kicking around somewhere. Not much use for them Out There, though."

  "I'd imagine not, Captain. Well, shall we go? The president is waiting for us."

  "Certainly."

  "This way, then."

  Kirk and Sulu walked toward the second of the three limousines, gently directed by Samuels; a silent chauffeur saluted deferentially and opened the door. Hayes climbed in after them, and only then did McKnight and Samuels head for the third limousine. Then they were off, with the howl of several sirens and the flashing of many red strobe lights clearing the way.

  The windowgla
ss of the limousine was itself hyperpolarized; Kirk, Sulu and Hayes took off their glasses. It was Sulu's first trip to Centaurus, and Kirk himself had never been in Mclverton.

  They were approaching the city from the southeast. McIverton was the only city of any size on the west coast of New America; further expansion would have to wait a few generations. There were villages, though, mostly settled by highly individualistic types who thought McIverton, a town of two hundred thousand, was too big. They were passing through one such now: a conglomeration of houses of all architectural designs, from traditional suburban to NeoFuller. But all the houses had lawns, shrubs and cultivated plant growth. A few people could be seen taking their ease in those gardens, protected by sunbrellas; no one dared sunbathe during this planet's long summer without taking special precautions.

  "This road's in good repair," Kirk remarked to Hayes. "Smooth ride."

  "Thank you, Captain," Hayes said with pride, as if he'd had something to do with the maintenance of the highway himself. "We don't have much automobile traffic anymore, but quite a few people keep motorcycles and mopeds for recreational and commuting purposes. Lord knows this planet has plenty of oil to crack for gasoline; no one ever exploited it before we got here, and we've been careful not to remake Earth's mistakes. Oil is a nice little export business for us, considering Earth's so nearby."

  Kirk knew that "nice little export business" accounted for billions of credits in the Centaurian treasury annually; Earth's hunger for petroleum had never abated, despite that day in the middle of the twenty-first century when the last drop of terrestrial oil had been pumped.