by Diane Carey
Soon a beeping response flowed through the comm. Graves looked up. “It’s Lieutenant Commander Uhura, Michael. She says they don’t dare evacuate. The sudden change in gross tonnage would cause the mules’ thrust to work even faster on the hull. They’d get half the people off and the Conestoga would split in two almost instantly. There’d be no second wave.”
“How do you suppose they figured out a thing like that?”
“Because Kirk thinks ahead,” Kilvennan muttered, but no one heard him. “If one of the other Starfleet ships could get up here, they could provide thrust from the port side. Two ships working together could hold that Conestoga in one place while Scott shuts them down . . . maybe.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Graves was cautious of her tone. “They’d never get here in time. Enterprise still isn’t signaling for assistance.”
“What’d you expect him to do?” Augustine asked.
She glanced at him. “I expect him to order us to come over there and rip ourselves apart helping him.”
When he tried to speak, to give them some kind of captainish wisdom about chances and choices, Kilvennan found his throat tight and his mind on his family. “He doesn’t think we’ll come,” he murmured.
Only Troy looked at him. He didn’t seem sure of what he’d heard. Or he was pretending.
Four thousand people were about to die in front of them. Enterprise’s valiant effort would go unrewarded. If wild mules were to be shut down simultaneously, it would have to be done with manual controls, right to the core mechanics. Even if a wizard like Montgomery Scott could manage to coordinate that with the Conestoga’s engineer, it was a lot more likely there’d be a split second of miscalculation. During that second, with one mule shutting down and the other still under lateral thrust—whoosh—the Conestoga and the starship would go spinning off and rip themselves to splinters just from the raw stress.
Kirk was trying it anyway. What was he thinking?
Nauseated, Graves flattened her hands over her face and turned away. “Tell me when it’s done. I don’t want to look at four thousand floating corpses . . .”
Before them, the Conestoga’s mule engines’ exhausts burned white-hot, the fist-shaped engines themselves actually beginning to glow orange now as they pulled against each other, using the Conestoga as the rope in a scatheful tug-of-war. On the starboard side, Enterprise had her primary hull blunted up against the side of the Comanche, pushing forward while her own tractor beams pulled backward at the same time. She was trying to hold the Conestoga together all by herself.
What a bitter prospect—the whole Expedition forced to surge forward, ship after ship, with bits of bodies and pieces of blown hull bumping against them like waves on a lake. Graves was right. Nightmare.
He fixed his gaze on one screen, where the bow of the Enterprise pressed relentlessly against the side of the Conestoga. Together in their death dance, the two massive ships shifted this way, that way, and turned on a changing axis in their wicked struggle, fixed together by tractor beams and thrust. What Kirk must be going through to coordinate an impossibly seamless effort—
“He’s no bureaucrat,” Kilvennan rasped. “Just look at them! He doesn’t have to do this. . . . He’s risking the ones he could save, plus the rest, plus everybody else. A bureaucrat would play it safe by beaming off two thousand and getting called a hero for saving who he could. He’s not in this for glory—he’s in this for believing in it.”
As if his own heart were the vessel being pulled in two, he felt it hammer in his chest until the din reached his ears and he thought his head was coming off. He closed his eyes, shutting out the sight before him. His hands went out to his sides to balance his churning body.
Impetuously then, like a fever breaking, the tension drained away. His heart’s thud calmed. His hands relaxed. His eyes opened. And everything was different.
“Only live once,” he murmured. “Troy, call all hands.”
Beside him Augustine turned and stared like a snowman. With abrupt enthusiasm he grasped Kilvennan and shook him bodily, then turned again. “All hands on deck! All hands!”
Sylvie Graves jumped high enough to plant a kiss on Kilvennan’s cheek before rushing to disengage the holding thrusters and flush the propulsion system with power. “Impulse drive ready!”
“Quarters.”
“General quarters, all hands!”
The Hunter’s Moon thrummed to life around them, all the lights going to alert scarlet. In the aft decks, they heard the pummel of feet hitting the decks and the voices of startled crewmates barking for action. The engines hummed. The helm lit up.
“Troy, take the helm. Forward thrusters, midship.”
After raising the alarm, Augustine came back bright-eyed and flushed. “Midship! What changed your mind, Michael?”
Kilvennan drew a breath, probably his last, and looked at the center screen. There, Enterprise stubbornly held the Conestoga together using tractor beams, thrust, hope, and the brazen tenacity of her captain.
“He did. He’s not letting them down. I figure someday he won’t let me down either. You can go forever looking for a captain who’ll fight for your life like that. Sylvie, signal Kirk we’re moving in to assist. Approach the Comanche’s port side, bow to. Let’s get in there and do it or die trying.”
“Hah!” Augustine charged the helm and jammed the controls. “I always wanted to die trying. Helm’s over!”
Chapter Eleven
“BATTLELORD.”
“Avedon. I find honor in your willingness to meet with me again.”
“Thank you for your sincerely delivered lie. Would your men like a meal? Warm drink?”
“We would never take such a chance.”
“Neither would I. Perhaps you would like to sit.”
“I would never sit in your presence.”
“Neither would I in yours.”
Shucorion smiled, rather genuinely. He understood Vellyngaith’s reasons both for honesty and deception. There was some comfort in knowing they could not trust each other. At least their relationship, for mortal enemies who would under other circumstances tie each other’s arteries, was forthright in its way.
The Blood guards and Vellyngaith’s Kauld guards glared intolerantly at each other from across the half-cylinder of deck, weapons glumly buzzing, as their two leaders met in the middle of the curved deck on the Blood Plume’s loading area. Remarkable, for Vellyngaith to come here a second time rather than demand a reciprocal meeting upon the battle barge.
But alliance was a new trick. No one knew the rules.
Intimidating. Shucorion was hardly the Blood’s equal to the Kauld’s greatest warrior. Not since the last Elliptical War had Blood possessed such a man, and that one died at the end of the cycle. He was still famous, but legends gained no ground.
“How is the building of your fortress progressing?” Shucorion began, hoping his question had a neutral sort of flavor.
Vellyngaith’s strong face tightened, as if he had eaten something tart. “Preconstruction has begun. I am no builder. I can’t judge.”
“When can you begin working on the planet? Taking possession of it?”
“Quite a time, unfortunately. Like you, Kauld have never done anything off our homeworld. All our factories and facilities are geared for preconstruction. To build on the planet itself would take years of preparation. Everything must be built ahead, and transported in sections. Whether we will take possession before Federation arrives, or as they arrive, or never, I cannot yet tell.” Vellyngaith paused, his eyes strained. His silver hair, slick and long, seemed somehow dull today. Perhaps it was the lighting. “I was told you have conditions,” he said. “I shall listen now.”
“I have conditions,” Shucorion told him, “now that I know you were being truthful about Federation’s movement to this area. The agreement, you must admit, was one-sided. Blood would go out and defend you against new enemies, when we are the weaker side. I agree that the Elliptical Wars are over whether we
want them over or not, now that we can move at starspeed. We either learn to live with each other, or we will strangle until one side dies. It is time to put an end, stand together against a new enemy. But there must be balance.”
Giving Vellyngaith a moment to absorb this and accept the proposal that was his idea after all, Shucorion paced away a few steps, looked out a portal, and viewed the vista of open space.
Addictive, this risk-taking! Some kind of narcotic. Taste a little, taste more . . . if he didn’t die, a bit more. How long would his specialness carry him through risk upon risk?
“I suppose there is no other way,” he murmured. “The only way our planets would stop fighting is to stand against someone else.” He turned again to Vellyngaith. “My conditions. You will send three of your Ruling Forum to our planet as a guarantee.”
“Hostages?”
“Advisors. And we shall send three of ours.”
Vellyngaith blinked, seeming for a moment not to understand the words. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“I made it up,” Shucorion said. “I also made up that each side will give free access to all military technology schematics to the other side. We will know what you have, and you will know what we have.”
The battlelord’s stony blue face took on a palette of shock. “How will we know?”
“I’m not sure, but experience will tell us what to think in time. That is what alliance is all about, Battlelord, or we will never trust each other. If you truly want to call an end, there’s no reason for us not to know how each other’s hardware works. If you want us to trust you, we’ll all tell what we have, this is how it works, here is our dispersement. And . . . you will supply us with two ellipses’ worth of antimatter for our dynadrives.”
Behind them, the Kauld guards tensed so sharply that Vellyngaith had to slash his hand toward them to stand them back.
Shucorion moved a step closer, faced the battlelord squarely, and lowered his voice some. “I don’t want Federation here any more than you do. But if you refuse my bargain, Blood will go away from you and take our chances with them. They may not kill as many of us and you might.”
Lips parted, dark eyes crimped, complexion flushed purple, Vellyngaith stared at him. “Why do I need you so much? What do you bring in return?”
“You need me because I among my people am the one who can dare take a chance. You also need me because Blood navigation can lead you through the Blind.”
He paused, watching Vellyngaith’s expression. The Kauld battlelord’s posture changed slightly enough to give Shucorion advantage. Kauld had strength, but Blood had cunning. Blood had survived through many cycles by outworking their opponents, by developing the one talent Kauld had never mastered. Kauld had come to believe that Blood were somehow mystical, that the black cloak of the Blind selectively protected them. Shucorion knew their success was only patience, science, simulation drills, and tricks like using the darkness to make weakness and cause illusions of strength. Tricks which Kauld had never bothered to develop.
“I will take those chances for us both,” Shucorion said, “if you accept my conditions. You must give me a reason to believe you will never again turn on my people. A fleet to stop Federation will be composed of Blood and Kauld, but under Blood control. You will strike, but we will tell you where.”
Vellyngaith’s hard cheeks softened. He held back a punishing smile that made his soldiers shuffle with uneasiness. “Is there more? One of my legs, perhaps?”
“The new Kauld fleet,” Shucorion went on, “when it is housed in your new fortress, will be twenty percent Blood.”
“Twenty percent!” Vellyngaith nearly choked. “Avedon! You dream deeply!”
“If I am to believe that your fleet will not turn on Blood, then Blood must be part of it. Did you expect me to go out and defend against Federation while you build your fleet fortress and trust you not to use it against my planet? Battlelord, we will never know each other that well.”
The eyes of the men from both worlds were fixed upon him. He felt every thought, every doubt, every suspicion as if needles pierced him. For a man of Blood, this was the hardest thing.
“Agree,” he said, “and you will have time to take that planet. You will own it when they arrive. If we are true allies, then I will go out into space and find a way to cripple them, cause them to hold back, perhaps not come at all. What is that worth, Battlelord? For our new ‘alliance’?”
Chapter Twelve
Conestoga Yukon
“WE WANT YOU and your security men off our Conestoga, and your starship out of our way. We’re turning back before a disaster happens that you can’t stop at the last second.”
The situation had been fomenting for weeks aboard the Conestoga Yukon. Now a suspicious collection of troublemakers crowded in front of James Kirk, Spock, Dr. McCoy, Uhura, Governor Pardonnet, and Michael Kilvennan on the people-mover’s green-carpeted park deck.
With more than three thousand passengers crammed aboard, each Conestoga virtually qualified as a town. This deck was the place designed to make them feel as if they weren’t sardines in a can, even though they were. The park deck on each Conestoga was the only open space aboard, the only area not devoted to sleeping or private matters. Ferns and small trees were potted in brick containers, providing not only simple appeal but oxygen. The carpet on this particular Conestoga was a big flat jungle of printed banana leaves. A play area in the center provided a hub for pub tables around the perimeter, relief for frustrated parents with little ones who didn’t understand the confines.
Today, though, there were no children scrambling on the climbers, nets, and tubes, no parents and grandparents clustered at the café tables with built-in cappuccino machines gurgling in the background and entertainment tapes at their fingertips. No one seeking a meeting place with friends or a refuge for private thought.
Instead, the deck today was crowded with grim adults. At the center of the forefront, instigating dissatisfaction in a particularly infectious manner—though not unexpectedly—was Billy Maidenshore.
Kirk wasn’t at all surprised to see this latest irritant at the laserpoint of trouble. As he approached the passengers, he felt set apart, uniformed, magnetic, for he knew that Maidenshore was here because of him, to render a verdict the courts hadn’t anticipated when they let this criminal slip through the legal loopholes. He knew also that Maidenshore had stirred his cauldron on this Expedition freely for many months while Kirk busied himself ignorantly with fleet details. Before him as he approached was his big mistake—or perhaps just a flaw of delegation. He hadn’t been able, or careful enough, to look over the manifests himself, to scan the names with prior records. He had forgotten that the name and reputation of James Kirk could be a conduit for revenge. In his years of conquest and salvation, he’d made many enemies.
Standing with the latest shady character were several upright citizens, side by side with Maidenshore in suspicious companionship, many who had emerged as leaders on this particular dormitory ship. The Kilvennan family was here—Michael’s frowsy little wife and his pious brother, at least—the well-meaning loudmouth Tom Coates with his wife, and many others who were familiar to Kirk by looks if not by name. Seeing them stand with Billy gave Kirk a shimmy of failure deep in his innards.
But what could he prove? How could he convince them they were listening to the wrong man? If Maidenshore had legitimately squirmed out of grand theft, embezzlement, and racketeering, it was Kirk’s own fault for not pushing the charges personally. Since then, Maidenshore had been, annoyingly enough, a model citizen on this convoy. Among the sixty-four thousand colonists, there were unquestionably many with besooted backgrounds among whom Maidenshore was only one, yet seeing him here today, stirring up this crowd, didn’t come as much of a surprise.
“You’ve made friends over here a little too efficiently, Billy,” Kirk accused. “What are you up to?”
“What would I be up to?” Maidenshore spread his hands elaborately. “Th
e same as all these other people. My business collapsed back on Earth, so I come out here to start a new life, take a chance, throw caution to the wind—”
“What’re you accusing him for?” Pressing forward, Tom Coates challenged Kirk with his big lumberjack presence. “Billy’s been helping us all along. Encouraging us, talking about putting our fears behind us, plugging forward never mind all these problems. He’s kept us going this whole time!” As Maidenshore patted his arm and uttered shhh’s, Coates grew red-faced behind his thick beard and bellowed, “Well, you have!”
“Meant every word,” Maidenshore calmly declared. “And I mean it now when I say it’s time to cut our losses. That accident with the mules on Comanche, that was too much, too close. We almost had four thousand people turned into little sprinkles before our eyes. There’s more trouble going on out here than Starfleet led us on to believe.”
“Starfleet never led anybody on,” McCoy argued.
Uhura, at the same time, snapped, “You people were determined to come no matter what the odds.”
Before anyone else could speak, Evan Pardonnet stepped between the two groups and appealed to the people who had been devoted to his vision until recent days. Everyone suddenly turned quiet in deference to this most ferocious advocate of principled expansion.
He used the silence to meet their eyes, connecting with each one of them before he spoke.
“Have you all forgotten our dreams?” he asked. “Our plans? We’re going out to establish a new mecca. All of you would be founders of the future. Now, because of setbacks, you turn your backs on everything we’ve built? Everything we can still do together? We have a chance to show the whole Federation what real independence and freedom means. If you turn your backs,” he finished quietly, “no one may ever come again.”
So sincere were his words, so deep his gaze into the times that could come for them that they indeed could see it too, there, just beyond the next mountain. They had already moved a whole range together, just to be here today.