by L. A. Graf
The Bean was missing.
Even at night, from half a kilometer away and through a haze of windblown dust, Sulu could see that Desperation’s central plaza was empty. Leaning a little further out from the shelter of the iron-stained rock formation that Agee said marked the limit of Peacemaker patrols, he adjusted the infrared filter on his goggles and scanned the rest of the town. A number of people in hooded dust mufflers walked the dark streets, all with the long glint of a weapon in their hands or hoisted across a shoulder. There was no sign of the experimental flight vessel.
Cursing beneath his breath, Sulu swung around and skidded back down the slope to where Agee waited with the camels. There were seven of them this time, four loaded with food and personal possessions, and one strapped with two air-filtered crates that occasionally let out a muffled bark. Sulu and Agee had done the packing earlier that afternoon, while Andrew Bertke, Heather Putirka, and a few other settlers who could handle Putirka’s prancing Arabian mares rode out to spread evacuation warnings to every homestead within fifty kilometers of Southfork. The remaining settlers had gone back to their own homes to pack up their children and possessions while Keith Putirka hauled the still-mending Weir to high ground in the Gory Mountains, safely cushioned in the straw of a robotic farm hauler converted into a covered wagon. Pulled by two huge Belgian geldings, with an indignant Arabian stallion tethered alongside, the wagon held the five Belle Terre-born foals that were all the Putirkas bothered to save of their own homestead.
Sulu and Agee had taken a different and more dangerous route, one that detoured south to Desperation. They hadn’t been able to raise a signal from Rand or Scott in Big Muddy all afternoon at the homestead, despite frequent attempts and the constant crackle of an open connection. With the weather back to what passed for normal in Llano Verde—a windblown haze of dust—Sulu hoped he could sneak into town, take the Bean, and carry Weir’s warning about the imminent catastrophe directly to the continental capital. Agee hadn’t been sanguine about his chances of success, but the one thing neither of them had foreseen was that the vertical flight vessel simply wouldn’t be there.
“They couldn’t fly it themselves, could they?” Agee shouted through the wind’s howl when Sulu relayed the bad news. Being overheard by the enemy was the one thing they didn’t have to worry about on this particular reconnaissance mission. “Isn’t it experimental?”
“Yes, but the antigravs are standard issue. Someone looking at the controls might have thought they knew how to fly it.” Sulu spat out the filter cloth that a sudden gust of gale-force wind had jammed into his mouth. He was dressed like Agee in desert nomad garb today, but no matter how tightly he tried to wrap the folds of cloth across his face, he still kept getting gagged. He turned sideways to the gusting wind before he tried to speak again. “Which means there’s probably a billion pieces of Bean lying around here somewhere.”
It was hard to see Agee’s expression past his goggles and scarf, but his voice sounded thoughtful. “Why would they need to go anywhere in it? Does it look like they’re evacuating the town?”
“No,” Sulu admitted. “I can see lights in most of the buildings. And there are Peacemakers on patrol.”
“Three or four?”
“More like a couple of dozen.”
“Then they’re expecting trouble,” Agee said. “That must be why they moved it.”
“You think they wanted to cover up the fact that we were ever in town?”
Agee must have made a scornful noise. Although the sound itself was lost in the wind, Sulu could see the outward bulge of the cloth over his face. “Wouldn’t you? If you’d led one Starfleet officer into an ambush and lost track of the other? Everyone on Belle Terre knows by now that your captain doesn’t take his losses lightly.”
“But where could you hide a shuttle that size?”
“If it were me?” The settler gave him a serious glance. “I’d drag it out into the desert and push it over a cliff, so it looked like it crashed there. But the Peacemakers would never do that much work unless they had to. I’m betting they just hauled the damned thing into the stable and covered it with straw.”
Sulu took as deep a breath as he could manage, considering his options. There weren’t many, and none were promising, but he couldn’t just run for the hills and hope for the best, like the settlers had. “Wait here for an hour,” he told Agee. “If you don’t see me—or the shuttle flying off—by then, you’ll know I got caught. Leave for the Gories to meet Andrew.”
“Just leave you? After all the trouble I took to rescue you from the Peacemakers in the first place?” the settler asked in exasperation. “Why don’t I come with you instead and make sure you don’t get caught?”
“This is my job—”
“And it’s my colony.” Agee was already ground-tying the camels, all except for the two they had ridden and the one that carried the dogs’ crates. “These Peacemakers are Belle Terre citizens. That means Belle Terre citizens should take some responsibility for getting rid of them.” He slapped their two camels on the chest, making them grunt and drop to their knees. “Anyway, you don’t even know where the stable is.”
That effectively settled the argument. Sulu mounted up with a grunt of his own as his leg muscles protested all the unaccustomed riding, and followed Agee through the iron-stained tumble of impact debris and down the long slope to Desperation. They spent most of the trip discussing, at the top of their lungs, the various strategies and maneuvers that might get them into the stable. It turned out all they needed to do was ride into town on obviously tired and droop-necked camels.
“Stable’s that way,” said the first Peacemaker to see them, brusquely. “Pub closes at eight.”
And that was it. Sulu and Joe Agee exchanged puzzled glances. Not to be challenged, or at least asked for some identification, in a town as heavily guarded as Desperation seemed a little suspicious. Sulu considered riding right back again in case this was a trap, but the camels really were tired and in need of food and water. So he followed Agee through the dusty, ill-lit streets to a big, arched building that must have been intended to serve as the shuttle hangar for some future regional spaceport. It looked like a gull stretching its wings above the buildings around it: the pub, a hotel, a supply store, and several drinking clubs. The two-story door in its side had a much smaller door cut into it, appropriate for camels, horses, and wagons to pass through. But the larger door was almost as wide as that on the Enterprise’s main shuttle bay. Sulu suddenly understood why Agee had thought this would make a good hiding place for the Bean.
But when they ducked inside the echoing dimness of the building, they found it mostly empty. Although one corner was covered in straw, it was scattered so stingily that Sulu could see the plasteel floorboards through it. Several camels had bedded down there anyway, lying with their knees folded in the awkward way that looked as if it couldn’t possibly be comfortable, eyes closed and heads swaying gracefully as they chewed over their ruminated food. One in particular looked almost as tired as their own camels, and was covered with even more dust. It kept its eyes open as it chewed, as if its surroundings weren’t entirely familiar and trusted, but it wasn’t that or the unusually well made saddle on the ground beside it that snagged Sulu’s disbelieving eye.
It was the unmistakable gleam of Starfleet burgundy on the sleeve that flopped out from one overstuffed saddle pack.
* * *
Uhura woke up with no memory of having gone to sleep.
She blinked up at the darkness, awareness seeping back slowly enough to make her wonder if she’d been stunned or drugged into submission by her captors. But what she felt wasn’t a sick chemical hangover or the muzzy aftermath of a phaser impact. It was a tingling, ghost-fine vibration deep in her muscles and bones. Uhura would have put it down to olivium poisoning and exhaustion, but she actually felt surprisingly alert, without a trace of heat across her cheekbones. She sat up, putting a hand down on either side of her narrow cot to see if the v
ibration was coming from outside. It wasn’t; it was definitely and somewhat disconcertingly inside herself. But at least her upright position gave her a glimpse of a shadowed doorway on the far side of her room. Or her cell.
Uhura managed to swing her feet to the floor and haul herself to her feet with the kind of silence that she thought Chekov would approve of. Unfortunately, her third step barked her shin against something large and heavy on the floor, making her yelp in sudden, smarting pain. Nothing moved outside the door, and after a minute Uhura unfroze herself and reached down to pat at the obstacle she’d hit.
Cold duranium casing met her questing fingers, its shape so familiar and yet so unexpected that Uhura froze again. What kind of outlaws would capture someone, then considerately place their communications device inside their cell with them? For all they knew, Uhura could have used it to get in touch with the continental authorities.
For all she knew, she still could.
She bent down, her fingers searching for the transmission key. Pressing it automatically woke up the communicator from power-saving mode, and showered the dark cell with minute reflections of light from the colored diodes on its panel. Uhura sank to the floor beside it, absently rubbing at the sore spot on her shin. As softly as she could, she said, “Uhura to Rand.”
“I believe your communicator is broken,” said a voice from the other side of the cell. “We already tried calling, and got no response.”
Uhura shot to her feet and swung around in the direction of that ashy shadow across the room. It widened, as if a door already ajar had been swung a little farther open. The voice on the other side was quiet, measured, and distinctly female—not what she’d expected from an outlaw. Even though Uhura knew that those of her own gender were just as likely to break the law, and could be capable of just as much outrage when they did it, her mental image of the militantly antisocial Carsons somehow had never included any women.
“It’s not a very well designed system,” Uhura said into the patient silence. She wasn’t sure why she was answering so truthfully, except that some quality in that voice seemed to demand it. “It’s supposed to use olivium to amplify its signal and the atmospheric dust layer to reflect it, but that restricts the places where it can work to a spot every twenty or thirty kilometers.”
“Too bad.” A slender shadow stepped around the door without needing to push it wider and lifted a hand to the old-fashioned wall controls. Light blossomed inside the “cell,” and Uhura saw that it was actually a small and spartan bedchamber, much like the dorm room she’d lived in as a Starfleet cadet. Its walls were austerely blank, and the few belongings on top of the narrow chest of drawers were arranged with delicate neatness. “Your hydrologist was quite insistent about sending a flood warning to Big Muddy,” the woman continued.
“My hydrologist?” Uhura stepped forward, torn between relief and suspicion. “You brought Bev Weir here, too?”
Her captor shook her head, looking somber. “We searched as long as we were able, but I am afraid we couldn’t find her. It was brave of your friend to jump in the river to get away from us, but not very sensible. Only a complete regeneration could have counteracted the olivium poisoning she received.”
The comment made Uhura realize what her internal ghost vibration was: the cellular backlash of being healed by a low-grade tissue regenerator. “Is that what you did to me?”
“Of course. We never withhold medical treatment, even for non-native species like you and me.” The woman’s voice held an ironic note that Uhura wasn’t quite sure she understood. “Your radiation shots had reached their limit of effectiveness, but at least you were spared the kind of multiple projectile wounds Dr. Anthony had. I am afraid he’ll retain visible scars, at least until you get him back to the hospital in Big Muddy.”
“You brought Greg Anthony here, too?” Uhura took another step forward, almost within contact distance. Her captor—if that was what she was—didn’t make the slightest effort to retreat out of range. “And you’re going to let us both go back?”
“Of course.” The woman’s level, dark gaze never wavered. “If we can’t use your communicator, the only other option is for you to carry the flood warning yourselves.”
“It’s not an option for you to warn Big Muddy?”
The dark-haired woman shook her head. “Our policy has always been to refrain from interference in both natural and human processes. And, to be truthful, many of us thought the rupture of the crater lake might actually benefit Llano Verde, by reducing the number of colonists trying to make this Burned land support them. We never considered how much worse the olivium contamination would be after such a flood until we spoke with Dr. Anthony. It was,” she added wryly, “something of a wake-up call.”
They regarded each other in thoughtful silence for a moment. “Lieutenant Commander Uhura, Communications Officer, U.S.S. Enterprise,” Uhura said at last.
“Brittany Linville, desert vegetation specialist, Belle Terre chapter of the N.R.C.S.,” her companion responded.
“N.R.C.S.?”
“The New Rachel Carson Society,” Linville said. “We’re here on a long-term volunteer mission to make sure the colonization process doesn’t destroy Belle Terre’s native ecology. You’ve heard of us?”
“Yes and no.” Uhura took a deep breath, remembering the warnings and rumors repeated as far away as No Escape. Not a single one had mentioned that the “Carson outlaws” were a group of dedicated ecologists intent on saving Belle Terre’s wildlife. “Let me guess. You’re not the ones who’ve been shooting at people around the rim of Bull’s Eye crater, are you?”
Linville’s voice turned ironic again. “Not unless we’re shot at first. Even then, we would rather use our forcefield to protect ourselves from projectiles while we move out of range, just as we did after we found you at Southfork.”
“Then who was shooting at us back there?”
“The Peacemakers,” Linville said, with a calm distaste much more convincing than any flare of emotion could have been. “The same people who pushed us off our nature reserve, terrorized our neighbors into leaving their homesteads along the crater rim, and shot down the missing orbital shuttle—”
“What?” Without thinking, Uhura reached out to grab at the woman’s arms. She felt more than saw Linville’s surprise at that invasive touch and quickly let go again, but her voice still shook with urgency. “You know that for sure? You saw it?”
“No,” Linville said. “We found the survivors afterward, unconscious near the crater lake. We didn’t know who they were, but we could tell the Peacemakers had tried to kill them, and that alone made them worth saving. One was too hurt to be carried any great distance, so we left them at an abandoned homestead while we went to get our medical equipment. When we got back, they were gone.”
“How many of them were there?” Uhura demanded.
“Three. Two colonists and a Starfleet officer.”
It was the oddest feeling. Uhura hadn’t realized just how sure she’d been that Chekov was dead, not until she felt the shock and incredulous relief that Linville’s words provoked. Just as quickly as the feeling swept through her, however, it was washed away again by an ominous thought. “Do you think the Peacemakers found them there while you were gone?”
“At first, we did,” Linville admitted. “But it seems more reasonable now to assume they escaped. In the past two days, the Peacemakers have burned several homesteads, and now we hear that they have taken over the entire town of Useless Loop. They appear to be looking for a specific person from the orbital shuttle, one who injured some of their own men. Those they speak to say they would be happier to find him dead than alive.”
“That would probably be Chekov.” Uhura took a deep breath, trying to realign herself to this new state of affairs. “We’ll have to find him before the Peacemakers do, but the first thing we have to do is warn Big Muddy about this flood.” She glanced down at her duranium-hulled communicator, brightly lit but ominously silent at
her feet. “If you can give me a map, and some idea of where we are on it, I think I can find a spot where this will work. It may take a little walking to get there.”
Linville inclined her head politely. “You’ll have to take our guides with you—it’s hard to navigate this area even in daylight, and all but impossible in the dark. I would also suggest you take time to eat something before you leave.”
“Is there time?” Uhura wasn’t sure she could even remember the last meal she’d had, but the urgent need to get the flood warning out transcended any possibility of hunger. “Does Dr. Anthony know how much longer we have until the crater bursts?”
“No,” said Linville. “But we do. The shafts create small discrepancies in the gravitation field. From those, we calculated that the first one was only a hundred meters away from the rim when it broke through to the springs at Southfork. The other two were five hundred meters from the rim when we measured them last night, right before we found you. They’re advancing at approximately twenty-five meters an hour.”
Uhura still hadn’t managed to fully absorb the first part of that comprehensive answer. “Shafts?”
“From the olivium mine inside the crater wall.” Linville’s lifted eyebrow conveyed a degree of irony even Mr. Spock would be hard pressed to match. “Surely, you’re not surprised, Commander Uhura. You must have realized by now that illegal olivium mining is the only reasonable explanation for what’s going on here in Llano Verde.”
Chapter Thirteen
“PAVEL, for the millionth time, come to bed.”
Chekov glanced away from the impenetrable mid-night outside their hotel room’s window. A tiny bedside lamp splashed precious little illumination across the suite’s only bed, but it was enough to highlight the dogs sprawled across half of it, and Thee buried under all the pillows somewhere in between. “I’m not tired.” With the storm’s dusty fist occasionally rattling off the hotel’s walls, his stomach churning from too many worried thoughts, and his head still throbbing despite a handful of the best analgesics Zander Nyrond could dig up, the half-truth fell out of him easily enough.