by L. A. Graf
“Hey.” The woman looked over her shoulder, eyes narrowing in unexpected annoyance. “We just got him here, after weeks of asking. You can’t have him for at least—”
“She’s Starfleet, Bev.” The dark-haired man straightened, dusting metal fuzz off his gray-green uniform. “Commander Uhura, isn’t it? Commander Scott’s back in our data control room with Chief McElroy, trying to make some olivium-frizzed pressure transducers talk to our central processing system. Do you want me to get him for you?”
Uhura shook her head. Intellectually, she knew there was no sense interrupting Scotty’s work, even as her stomach twisted with urgency. “I can talk to him there, if you’ll show me the way. In the meantime, could one of you please call Tech Lab J9 and tell the person who answers what your landline number is here?” She could see the puzzlement in both their faces. “I’m expecting some urgent news about a shuttle crash.”
“The cargo shuttle from the orbital station?” The blond woman leapt to her feet with an alacrity that reminded Uhura of a Starfleet cadet. “On my way.”
The dark-haired man didn’t say anything, but he led Uhura at a brisk pace down another cluttered passage, past digital map displays of river levels, wind conditions, and pressure fronts. They ended up at a tightly sealed airlock, where he paused to give her an apologetic look. “If you could just brush off the worst of the dust, Commander—”
“I know, to keep the computers from crashing.” Uhura had already recognized one of Llano Verde’s standard defenses for protecting sensitive data-processing systems against olivium contamination. She beat as much dust as she could off the thick material of her uniform, running her fingers through her hair and swiping off her dangling earrings for good measure. “This wouldn’t happen to be the province’s climate modeling center, would it?”
The young man snorted and sealed the airlock behind them. “Not a chance. You wouldn’t see climate modelers working through their supper.” Uhura watched a diaphanous veil of dust drift off her clothes and skin as the air vigorously cycled inside the cleaning chamber. “No, we’re the hydrology and meteorology division—the idiots assigned to collect actual data on what the Burn is doing to Belle Terre’s climate.” A light went green above the inner airlock door, and he reached out to unlock it. “Which is a hell of a lot harder than staring into computerized crystal balls and making grand predictions.”
Uhura followed him out into a room so thickly studded with data-processing stations that it looked almost like a starship’s bridge. On the far side, all she could see of Scotty were his legs and feet sticking out from under one of those control panels. Based on the stream of technical instructions emerging in his rolling Scottish brogue, it sounded as if he had already found the source of their problem. A bearded man who must be Chief McElroy squatted beside him, looking a little overwhelmed by the help he was getting. Even from the airlock door, Uhura could see that his face was wind-callused and reddened by too much olivium exposure. Federation medical science could heal the DNA damage caused by olivium radiation, even weeks later, but it required daily treatments out in the field to keep your skin from reacting as if you’d soaked in too much ultraviolet.
“Dr. Anthony, you’re just the person I needed,” McElroy said, looking up in relief. “Do you and Weir have any spare P537 signal modulators?”
“Not lying around loose,” the younger man said. “I’d have to yank them out of the extra hydrographical units.”
“Then start yanking,” said Montgomery Scott’s muffled voice. “I’ll need at least three of them to get this finicky data-stream receptor of yours to sort out transponder signals from olivium noise. It wouldn’t hurt to throw a couple of J-channel buffers into line, too, so we don’t clog its little silicon intake valves with too many water level measurements at once. And while you’re at it, bring me some—”
“Commander Scott,” Uhura interrupted. “There’s been a problem with the shuttle.”
Something clattered inside the control panel, accompanied by the sound of a ferocious Gaelic curse. A moment later, Scotty hauled himself out to stare at her in dismay. “It wasna the antigravs, was it?” he demanded. “I told the lad we needed to give them a weeklong shakedown under maximum dust conditions—”
Uhura shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean the Bean. It’s the cargo shuttle that was due to land here tonight. It fell off the orbital platform’s tracking screens an hour too early, and hasn’t been heard from since.”
“Not the one Chekov was hitching a ride on?”
Uhura nodded. “We think it must have crashed somewhere in the Outland. Sulu took the Bean out again to see if the orbital station could pinpoint its last known position. He should be coming back any time now.”
That made Scotty grunt in approval, but the other two men exchanged dubious looks. “Um—why do you want to find out where the shuttle was before it crashed?” Anthony asked politely and, Uhura thought, somewhat pointlessly.
“To send out a search and rescue party, of course.”
“A continental search and rescue party?” Chief McElroy clarified. “Or a Starfleet landing party?”
“The Enterprise isn’t parked in orbit above Belle Terre anymore,” said Montgomery Scott. “She’s busy chasing folks away from that stuffed olive you call a Quake Moon.”
“Which means we’ll have to request a rescue team from Emergency Services.” Uhura glanced back and forth between the two scientists, sensing even stronger undercurrents of doubt surging between them. “What’s wrong with that? The shuttle was an official colonial vessel.”
McElroy sighed. “That’s the problem, Commander. You see, colony personnel are considered morally expendable, because they knew the risks they were taking when they decided to settle here.”
He sounded as if he was quoting something, but Uhura couldn’t imagine that any of Belle Terre’s colony charters had included a statement like that. “Morally expendable?” she repeated, frowning. “What does that mean?”
“It means that our continental governor considers survival something you have to earn to stay in the colony’s gene pool, not something you have an innate right to,” Anthony said bitterly.
McElroy lifted a restraining hand toward his subordinate, although his lips had also tightened beneath his beard. “We were sent out here from colony headquarters to measure the effects of the Burn on microclimates as well as on the entire planet’s weather,” he told Uhura quietly. “That meant we had to spend months installing monitors all over Llano Verde, and hardwiring underground optical cable networks to connect them all. It was dangerous work, especially near the impact craters. They were brand-new back then, and real unstable. We lost two of our field technicians on Splat—” McElroy paused, a muscle jerking beneath his callused skin. “No matter how many times we asked for a rescue mission, all Governor Sedlak would say is that we should have known the risks we were taking, just like the settlers did.”
“He never sent out a rescue team?” Scott demanded.
“Never. I must have sent a dozen messages back to colony headquarters, protesting Sedlak’s hands-off policy, but all I ever got was boilerplate from Evan Pardonnet’s office, saying that every province in Belle Terre had the right to choose its own destiny.”
“We’re not residents of this colony,” Anthony said grimly. “Sedlak doesn’t have the right to choose our destiny!”
McElroy sighed. “You know that, and I know that, but it doesn’t cut any dust with Llano Verde’s Emergency Services. They’re always happiest when they’ve got an excuse to hunker down in their underground barracks and pretend they’re too busy to actually rescue someone.”
Uhura took a deep breath. She was starting to understand where the rising level of hostility among Outlanders was coming from. “I don’t think a hands-off policy is going to work with a Starfleet officer involved,” she said. “Our policy has always been to rescue lost crewmen unless it endangers too many other lives.”
“And if we hav
e to,” Scotty added, “we’ll take our Starfleet vertical flight vessel and go looking for the cargo shuttle ourselves.”
That statement made McElroy’s eyebrows jerk upward, but it was in surprise and admiration rather than scorn. “In that case, let’s see if we can help you find it,” he said, and waved Anthony to a nearby meteorological panel. “What time did the crash happen?”
Uhura backtracked through the past few hectic hours, trying to remember when Sulu had finally answered her hail. “Between fifteen hundred and sixteen hundred hours.”
“Bring up the atmospheric pressure records for two hours on either side of that time slot, Greg.” McElroy was tapping commands into another data station. “I’ll filter them at maximum sensitivity for pressure variations two orders of magnitude or greater with a duration under ten seconds.”
Scotty grunted his approval of that. “Explosion wave front,” he told Uhura, when she slanted him a puzzled look. “A shuttle crash is about the only thing that would match those parameters.”
He didn’t say whether the crash that matched those parameters was one the crew could walk away from or be pulverized by. Uhura felt her shoulders lock up with tension as the data processors ran their filtering routines, not sure whether she should be hoping for a positive or negative result.
“Results coming up now.” Anthony watched lines of intricate numbers pour down the screen in front of him like a greenish waterfall. Apparently he was familiar enough with their data-coding system to keep track of what it meant. “Data output by sector. Shorelines negative. Coastal plains negative. Fluvial valleys negative. Alluvial fans negative. Crater slopes negative.” He glanced over his shoulder. “That’s everything, Commander.”
Uhura bit her lip, not sure whether that was good news or bad. “You’re saying that none of your stations recorded a shuttle crash?”
“Not this afternoon.” McElroy turned to face her, smiling. “We’ve got some holes in the system, of course, especially around the impact craters. But the chances of the cargo shuttle landing in one of those data holes by accident should be pretty low. I’d say your lost shuttle might just have managed to land itself intact.”
“In which case, a search and rescue mission becomes an even higher priority.” Uhura glanced over at Montgomery Scott and saw the way his tired shoulders had straightened under his wrinkled Starfleet coveralls, as if the mantle of Captain Kirk had fallen over him. She responded as automatically to that aura as if the captain himself were present. “Orders, Commander?”
“We’ll head for the spaceport, and see what Mr. Sulu’s managed to find out,” Scott said crisply. “And then I think we’ll pay a wee visit to the continental governor.”
They almost made it to the surface.
Chekov couldn’t see where the water met the land, of course. The gale-force winds that had battered their shuttle also thrashed the top layers of water, splashing it about like a playful lion. By the time they found themselves laboring up a slope of tumbled rock as steep as a flight of stairs, waves dragged against them from every direction, and churned-up mud rendered the water as opaque as black glass. Chekov’s grip had migrated from Plottel’s wrist to the handle on the front of his breastplate. He could only see the other man’s face when their helmets touched, and then only in the dim amber light of his suit helmet’s heads-up display. They’d progressed more and more slowly with every step taken, until Chekov felt as though he were dragging more of Plottel’s weight than Plottel himself. When the colonist finally staggered to a stop, Chekov didn’t try to urge him forward. He turned, clapped their helmets faceplate-to-faceplate, and saw the water lapping at Plottel’s chin before either of them had a chance to say anything. They’d run out of time.
Despite his promises to find some way to share their atmosphere, Chekov couldn’t imagine any way to rip out either breathing unit and manually carry it. Not quickly enough to prevent one or both of them from drowning in the process. Leaning backward in his suit to turn his gaze upward, he hoped the slurry of mud thrashing about above them really did indicate the pounding of the wind and the violence of open air.
“Listen to me . . .” He brought his faceplate back into alignment with Plottel’s and began again. “You have to trust me.”
Plottel had tipped his head as far back in his helmet as he could. His breathing was audible even across two thick panes of transparent aluminum. “All right.”
“When I tell you to, take three deep, fast breaths, and hold the last one.” Chekov put both hands on the breastplate’s seal, his eyes locked with Plottel’s. “We’re just a few meters under the surface. Swim straight up.” Although filled with dust, violent and wild, the air above them could theoretically be breathed. At least well enough to sustain them until a rescue party could yank them out, carry them back to the orbital platform, and treat them for olivium exposure. “Are you ready?”
Plottel nodded, eyes filled with tears.
Chekov took a deep breath of his own. “Now.”
He counted breaths along with Plottel, waited to see the other man’s lips press shut on the last one, then tore open the breastplate to breach Plottel’s suit.
The flooding could only have taken seconds; it felt like hours. Plottel’s face squeezed into a fist of discomfort as frigid lake water overran his helmet; then he fumbled the container off his head and kicked himself free of the suit Chekov had already yanked down around his hips. Chekov pushed the colonist upward, wanting to help but painfully aware that he was no longer a component in Plottel’s survival. Leaving the suit where it had deflated, he turned back to the incline and continued on his own, no longer impeded in his climb to the surface.
He found no distinct interface between water and air. Battering currents and sluicing mud somehow passed into pounding wind and the rattling roar of dust against his helmet. Both environments left him equally off-balance and blind. It wasn’t until he’d clambered several body-lengths up the crater’s side that he realized it was dust caking in the joints of his suit that slowed him, not the friction of storm-tossed water.
Rising up on his knees, he tried to search the rocky shore for some sign of the others. He thought he could see a clear glitter of sunlight dancing farther out on the water, but here on the shore blowing dust obliterated the world beyond a few meters, and the continual skreel of grit against his helmet rendered him as deaf as the olivium-poisoned water had. Chekov made an awkward circle on hands and knees. The lake’s surface whipped and frothed with such fury that he had no hope of finding Plottel among the waves if the man hadn’t already made it to shore. Chekov was just steeling himself to continue up the crater and hope for the best when a tear in the dusty curtain revealed a huddled form farther down the shoreline. It was too small and soft to be a boulder.
Dust caked Plottel’s wet clothes and hair just as Chekov had feared it would, painting his still form in a glitter of sodden olivium. “Plottel?” Chekov wasn’t sure if the sound would carry through the air. It exploded overloud inside his helmet, startling him with its realness. That Plottel couldn’t hear him seemed impossible. He closed one heavily gloved hand around Plottel’s shoulder and shook him sharply. “Plottel, get up! We have to find some cover!” Please don’t have drowned—I promised I wouldn’t let you drown!
But it wasn’t water that darkened the front of Plottel’s coverall or soaked the dust-stained rocks beneath him. Rearing back on his heels, Chekov dragged his hand across the stone and turned up a palm smeared with muddy red. He had only a moment in which to realize something far worse than drowning had ravaged Plottel’s body; then a series of powerful hammer blows shattered his breastplate and sent him sprawling back down the slope into the water.
Chapter Four
LAKE WATER exploded into Chekov’s suit, swarming the torso with cold and flooding his helmet until olivium-poisoned sediment stung his eyes. If he’d been breathing, he’d have gasped in a lungful on the first shock of impact. Instead, whatever force had shattered his breastplate and brea
ched his suit had also stunned him half-senseless. He landed spread-eagled in a cloud of mud, and recovered the urge to breathe only an instant before the awareness that he was foundering more than a meter underwater.
With no breath to hold, he gritted his teeth against a compulsion to inhale and flailed to pop the helmet’s latches. It tumbled free, disappearing downslope among the rocks and silt and darkness. There was no longer a torso seam to rupture—the breastplate had shattered into a dozen jagged pieces, taking all semblance of suit integrity with it. He struggled out of the gear as if it were a dead skin. Lungs burning, he kicked toward the surface, hoping the dust-choked air was more breathable than the water.
Wind tore at him the moment he broke surface. Blinding, searing, screaming wind that instantly clogged his uniform with dust and tore away the sound of his own coughing. He crawled forward on all fours, found the shore with both hands by the simple expedient of dragging himself from chill water to even more chilling air. Rocks towered higher than he remembered from his first exit, but Plottel’s body was still visible when he rose up to squint beyond a curve of slanted stone.
Plottel’s body, and the barrel of a weapon longer than his own arm.
Chekov threw himself to the side, grabbing the gun’s barrel and pushing it the opposite way even as he used it to yank the stranger off balance. A sharp report, loud enough to echo down the crater despite the winds, kicked the barrel with considerable force and struck it suddenly, fearfully hot. Pain hissed across his palm. He released his grip involuntarily, catching the stranger’s striped face scarf instead, and brought the man down with a fierce blow to the temple. Then they both dropped to the dust, the gun and its overhot barrel sandwiched between them.