by Diane Carey
Self-consciously he rubbed his face to bring the sensation back.
At the pilot station, nearly upside down overhead, Garitt craned his neck and manipulated his controls to move the Plume deeper into the Blind, and glanced at Shucorion every few seconds. The other men didn’t look directly at Shucorion either, trying to keep up an image of working while their leader made his decision, but it was all lies. Garitt, at least, was being honest in his eavesdropping.
Shucorion recalled for an instant how odd this way of life had been when he’d first come to space, living on the outer walls of a specialized drum forever turning. Now he was used to it, accustomed to walking on the wall, to speaking upward at others, and to the constant scent of repairs and paint. Near his left knee, the bulkhead strut had just been all welded and painted after the last encounter, that incident with a rogue Kauld Marauder, and gave off a strong scent of chemical bond. If they died today, he’d miss that smell.
They hadn’t even known a battlebarge was in the vicinity, or they’d have avoided it. All they could hope to do now was hide from it with their navigating skills, draw the cloak of their own relentless work over their heads, and huddle in the sensor silence. Troubling.
As he stood with Dimion against curved bulkheads the taupe of weathered stone, he glanced around at the crew. Each man in his monocolored jacket or tunic or shirt was a dot of color different from the man next to him. Their faces were tight blue patches as they listened and waited, their eyes dots of concern and readiness. Only the instruments made any noise or movement, flickering in patchwork bits of light against the paint-swatch tunics and shirts and jackets.
They were entranced by their avedon’s way of thinking at times like this. Shucorion was accustomed to that, their listening, their curiosity, even the sometime fear in their eyes. None of them had ever challenged him yet. They could leave if they didn’t want to be here with him. Anyone could leave at any time, and in the past some had left, but these ninety defenders had stayed with him for many turns and no one made noise of leaving.
Some stayed, he knew, because they enjoyed being free of the disasters that constantly befell their planet. Space was better than earthquakes and tidal waves. Others, though, stayed because of Shucorion and what they believed about him. Their trust was a sharp pinch.
Very upsetting, to have a Kauld Marauder so far out, but he knew why they were here. They were beginning to defend this little star system with its big happy habitable planet that had never been claimed.
“They’re defending that planet already,” he said aloud, “before they even put a stick on it.”
“Then it’s true?” Garitt asked. “They mean to build a fleet base there?”
“It’s true. For the first time in the history of either of our races, one of us is moving off our homeworld. It means the end for Blood if Kauld establish a base outside our system and put half their fleet on it. They can build freely on another planet, and we’re finished.”
His honesty clearly upset the crew. The truth was better swallowed whole. Along with it was the sauce that Blood could never hope to prevent such a base. Kauld could build it, and there was nothing that could be done to stop them.
Why was that acute-sensor light blinking? It never blinked. Not that one.
He stepped closer and squinted into the readout cylinder. “Dimion . . .”
“Unbelievable.” Dimion kept his voice low as Shucorion peered over his shoulder at the critical screens. “How could a Series Two Savage be destroyed by a scanner ship? A scanner ship!”
Obliged to answer the unanswerable, at least to sound as if he knew, Shucorion shrugged and continued looking at the factors in the cylinder. “They tricked him somehow, maneuvered him into obliteration. Dimion, what is this data?”
“A scanner ship . . .” Dimion agonized. “Nothing but a surveying vessel.”
“Not by the vessel,” Shucorion said. “By the skill. They fought not with power, but with cleverness. They were relentless. Even with level-nine damage they continued to stand firm. Where did these figures come from? Do you see this?”
“What kind of people are they?” Garitt interrupted. “Who stands firm against something they can’t beat?”
Frustrated, Shucorion took Dimion by the shoulders and turned him toward the data cylinder with the funny figures. “Isolate these. Do it now.” Then he turned to Garitt to retire the persistent subject. “They stood against the impossible and they won. We’ve never encountered people like this before. Even the Formless went away when they found out about the conflict between Blood and Kauld. But that scanner has been here far longer than we expected. They stayed and stayed, picking through the cluster, always studying, never growing frustrated, never lonely, never lost interest . . . they never engaged in any kind of conflict, yet at the first challenge they meet a trained savage with Series Two primary armor and manage to destroy him! They could’ve run away and come back some other time, stronger. Instead, they stood their ground against enormous odds. It was an insane thing to do, and yet they won.” He paused, shook his head, suffered a little longer. “I should never have sent Ulwen to strike them.”
Dimion shook his head. “I should’ve advised you differently. At least he died working—” His instruments clattered then, drawing him back to the security of work. However, this refuge was to slip away immediately. “Avedon . . . these figures . . . I make no sense of them. They’re . . . core content ciphers . . . spectral band . . . blast ignited . . .” He shook his head, completely confused, and apologetically added, “Of course, I’m not a geological engineer. You’re the only blast technician Blood have in space.”
“Let me look.”
Shucorion leaned over the numbers, the symbols, the machine’s digestion of chemical compound, clastic levels, and all the other signals that spoke of those sparkles and shines.
“I think the survey ship broke through the moon’s crust,” Dimion told him, unsure. “Some kind of matter blew out. It changed color, but the heat activity never left it. Are the readings wrong?”
Wrong . . . wrong? Wrong . . . could they be?
Or were these the numbers and symbols that would cleave the future apart in favor of Blood?
Think. Think. Harder.
The symbols played through and the screen went to neutral, waiting for someone to tell it what to do. Dry-mouthed, Shucorion could scarcely find his hands to work the controls, then could scarcely recall how to do it. Think.
“Dimion,” he stammered, “show . . . the numbers again.”
Confused, Dimion hesitated a moment as if afraid this might be a joke or a ruse, but finally came to do as he had been asked.
The information rolled and rolled. Clastics. Compounds. Blast results. Chemicals. Reactorants.
Shucorion’s heart began to drum. Could he believe his own eyes?
“Show them again.”
Completely baffled, Dimion huffed a breath as if to speak, then changed his mind and simply ran the information a third time.
As the data played its lights across his paling face, Shucorion sank onto the seldom-used stool, which luckily was right behind him because he didn’t look, and gripped the handholds on the cylinder rack.
“Again.”
Dimion pressed the controls and turned the cylinder slightly to make the readings come still another time. “What are you seeing in them, over and over?”
Shucorion strained some moisture into his mouth. “Something only a blast technician could possibly understand. Something . . . wondrous.”
Was that his voice? Were those his hands?
Here he sat, wishing the stool had a back so he could slump. He was staring at the impossible. Impossible!
“Impossible,” he whispered. “Can this happen? All at the same time? My mortal enemy is about to build a base on a planet that . . . This changes everything . . .”
“What is it?” Dimion begged, bending low. “What do the numbers mean there?”
Shucorion stared into the
cylinder, his feet and legs tingling. “A gift has been laid at my feet . . . I am chosen!”
For the first time his eyes left the numbers and fixed upon Dimion’s diffident gaze. They looked at each other, Shucorion digesting his amazement and battling the sudden changes that must occur to everything he had ever assumed, Dimion quite frightened to see that battle going on.
“Avedon! We’re being flashed,” Garitt interrupted. His eyes were crimped and fearful as he looked up. For the first time he looked truly afraid. “Kauld have found us.”
Chapter Five
Industrial Yacht Pandora’s Box
“JIMMY.”
“Billy. I had to see this with my own eyes.”
“Big as life.”
There he was. The latest boil on the backside of a generally sterling career. Well, sterling in the eyes of history, anyway. So far.
James Kirk came to a halt face-to-face with Billy Maidenshore, quite literally the last person he ever expected to find lurking in the hindquarters of the Belle Terre Expedition.
“What is this?” Billy Maidenshore spread his hands to receive Kirk and the captain of Pandora’s Box, Felix Blaine, two of Kirk’s security guards, and two of the Expedition’s private detectives. “Don’t tell me you’ve got more trumped-up charges to lay on me, Admiral?”
Kirk studied the other man’s face for a few lingering seconds, deciding whether or not to speak at all. “It’s ‘captain’ for the duration.”
“Why don’t they just call you ‘sledgehammer’?” Billy asked, smiling in a particularly confounding way. “These methods of yours, they got no finesse. How’d you get aboard a private ship, ‘Captain for the Duration’? This could be taken for unlawful entry. I don’t suppose you have a warrant. You didn’t the last time.”
“I have reciprocal jurisdiction,” Kirk told him. “Until we arrive at Belle Terre, I’m the local law enforcement.”
“Doesn’t mean you can make up the rules, does it?”
“I’ll ask the questions, Billy. First, didn’t I put you away? Or did somebody drop the key?”
“They dropped the ball.” Maidenshore’s gray eyes twinkled and his metal-shaving hair gleamed from its latest visit to the onboard salon. “You tried, sledge, you tried. But like so many before you, you got all caught up in the victory and slipped on the follow-through. You had no case. You had no proof, no justified cause of action, just like you had no warrant for search and seizure. That’s because you acted rashly. Me, I stayed calm. And here I am. A man like me, you can’t just whisk under the rug.”
“Why’d you register under a false name?” Kirk incited.
“Why stir up trouble? No sense getting you all flustered as the Expedition was launching. You had your hands full. Supplies, fuel, cargo, policy and procedures, protocol compliance, mission goals, expenditure forecasts, operational priority . . . operational chain of command, disease control, weapons coding . . . seventy-plus ships moving through space, providing one hell of a tempting target for a raiding party . . . why should I add one more little worry to your list?”
Kirk narrowed his eyes. Maidenshore had just given an almost perfect rundown of Expedition command responsibilities. There was a clue in there. Somewhere.
“You slipped through my fingers once, Billy,” he warned. “I won’t let you do it again. This is my expedition and I mean to have order here.”
Maidenshore laughed and pressed a manicured hand to his chest. “These aren’t Starfleet ships, Jimmy. Blaine here and the others, they’re not Starfleet captains. Not just bush pilots or bus drivers. They’ve got their own way of doing things. Everything’s volunteer on this expedition. All these captains and crews, they’ve got stakes in this. They’re not used to being bossed. Haven’t you figured that out, all these problems you’ve been having for the past three months? They’re resisting you, pal. You’re better than Broadway, the way you think of yourself.”
“How’d you get out of it, Billy? We had a collection of charges against you the length of your leg.”
“Nothing to get out of. I never did anything wrong. I just contracted to move some things around for some people, on a modest commission. The charges were bogus. They don’t put innocent people in jail.” He struck a stage-worthy pose and gnashed, “At least not smart ones.”
“If you’re so innocent, why are you using an alias?”
“Popular and successful people always have enemies, y’know,” Maidenshore said airily. “I mean, you should know, more than most, right? Admiral James T. Kirk, big hero, adventurer, famous . . . don’t you have any enemies?”
Kirk chafed, but managed to keep it under his uniform. “What’re you doing on the Expedition? Why would you suddenly drop everything and sign on to a no-return expedition?”
“You should ask? You confiscated everything I was planning to stay for. My future was all tied up with that shipment. You took it away, just like magic. Why did I come? Because I’m flexible. I came for the opportunity! A whole new world, new frontiers, new challenges . . . It’s been real good. I fit in here. I help these people. I’m a very generous type. This is perfect for me, out here, with all these people who didn’t know what they were stepping in. Sickness, hunger, fear . . . who else can give them comfort? You? That dreamy young governor? Nah, they need a father figure. You shouldn’t be so surprised to see me on the Expedition. After all, you gave me the idea. Remember?”
Three months earlier
“I think you’ll like Evan Pardonnet, Jim.” Councilman Howard Tanner, United Federation of Planets, heeled back in his chair. “He reminds me of you in some ways, not the really obvious ones. He had this idea to just get up and go, with a whole colony all in one swoop, set up a spaceport city complex and build, completely on their own, a new Earth. No preliminary outposts, no scouting other than the basic stuff, just pick a planet they could live on way far out, and just go. They petitioned the Federation Council for support and we liked their pioneer moxie. They’ve elected Pardonnet their governor.”
“Pioneer moxie,” Kirk tasted, and glanced at Leonard McCoy. “They’ve given it a name.”
“You still hold the copyright,” the doctor commented. “What planet are they going to, Councilman?”
“They’ve picked a solar system we call ‘Occult,’ ” Tanner explained. “It’s got a flicker distortion when viewed from here. There’s a planet out there, nice one, that’s practically Earth all over again. Temperate climate on both hemispheres, couple of nice big continents, ice caps, blue water, the works. They call it ‘Belle Terre.’ ”
“Belle Terre.” The words rolled around in Kirk’s mind. He pressed a hand to his Starfleet-issue powder-blue trousers and felt as if he were fading away. “Beautiful Earth. A Class-M planet nobody else has claimed?”
“Nobody around wants it, I guess. Maybe there’s nobody out there who can live on Class-M.”
“What’s the problem then? Why’d you send for me?”
“The area hasn’t been extensively scouted. Only a ship or two, freelance. The only outposting we’ve done is to put a lightship on the edge of the sensor-dark area. We just don’t know what’s out there and the Federation was uneasy about supporting a colonial effort in an unscouted, uncleared, unoutposted area, so we withdrew. The colonists threw a fit. They said they didn’t want an area that was already laid out and cleared. They want to carve the wilderness for themselves. They’re real fighters from the heart. They just wouldn’t be put off, not even when the Federation Colonial Bureau decided to withdraw support and Starfleet protection. The colonists said fine, hired themselves some privateers to protect them, and mobilized to go anyway. They’ve got seventy-two ships so far, to move sixty-four thousand colonists. They’ve come up with a whole new way to move themselves. Conestogas—huge passenger warehouses in space. They have no engines. They’re moved by detachable mule engines, independent power plants that can tow at impulse or warp speed. Your friend Montgomery Scott helped develop them. They were the idea of one of his st
udents, so he sponsored the development.”
“Scotty,” Kirk muttered. “And I don’t suppose he gave you any other ideas?”
“So,” Tanner continued, “what could we do? Send them off into ultra-deep space with no support? Just some rat-pack privateers to fend for them? How would that look? I convinced the Council to allow for one starship and a couple of tenders, like a CST and a cutter, maybe. They agreed . . . but only if you lead the expedition, Jim. James Kirk and the Enterprise, back together again. Gives the Belle Terre Expedition a ring of credibility.”
“Spock’s captain of the Enterprise now. Why don’t you ask him?”
“We did. After all, it’s his ship now. He said he’d go, but only with you in command. We agree. We think your reputation alone will protect the Expedition to a considerable degree. Listen, why don’t you meet Governor Pardonnet, and let him give you his pitch. He’s pretty infectious.”
“Not to worry, Councilman,” McCoy spoke up. The sun came in the window over the Jefferson Memorial Rose Garden and glinted on his otter-brown hair, picking up buried threads of gray. “I think Jim’s already infected. Am I right, Jim?”
Kirk tilted his shoulder and peered at him caustically. “For a middle-aged clairvoyant with terminal speak-out-of-turn-itis.”
“Why don’t you give me a gag order? You’ve been a captain long enough.”
“I’m an admiral, Doctor.”
“The hell you are. The uniform’s an admiral.”
After indulging in a little grumble in the back of his throat, Kirk shifted back to the councilman. “Howard, you’re not expecting me to stay out there with these people, are you? I’m not the colonist type.”