by Diane Carey
Kirk watched the dismayed faces of the pioneers, saw the undeflectable devotion of Evan Pardonnet, and felt himself charged with a very old feeling. He found himself just standing here, pressing down a grin of admiration, even gratitude. For a moment he almost hoped—
“We’re making up our own minds,” Maidenshore broke in, plowing over the near-miss. “That’s the first kind of freedom. We’ve got this whole ship’s company, plus another eighty-seven people from other Conestogas who want to turn back while the gettin’s good. I got to admit changing my mind on the whole thing, I’ll be the first to admit it. Nobody here wants to be the Donner Party of space. Nobody’s in that big of a rush.”
“Sorry, Governor.” Mae Kilvennan spoke without a trace of sympathy, not like an intrepid pioneer, but like a mother who had just seen her children on the brink of tragedy. “We’ve elected Mr. Maidenshore our mayor. We’re seceding from the colony until things are safer to bring our families out here.”
Clearly wounded by the statement, Pardonnet murmured, “Seceding . . .”
“It’s been months living like this, Governor,” she added, then shook her head and didn’t bother describing.
Pardonnet simply stared at her. His silence was far more poignant than any further plea.
“Once the track’s been stabilized,” Maidenshore took over, filling the gap of guilt as it rose, “I’ve promised to underwrite the expedition for any of my friends here who decide to take another shot at it.”
The gaggle of families broke into applause. Very irritating.
“A particularly generous pledge,” Mr. Spock commented, leaving a great deal unspoken.
There wasn’t exactly approval in Spock’s voice. Kirk glanced at him, but knew a dead-end street when he saw one. He turned to the Yukon’s commanding officer and asked, “Captain? Your intentions?”
Freight Captain Linda Battersey blinked as if she still had doubts. “Definitely I would prefer to stay with the Expedition. However, I’m bound by command contract to ferry these people wherever they want to go. If that means back to Federation space, that’s where I steer.”
“Understood.” Again Kirk turned, this time to Michael Kilvennan. “You’re going with them too?”
The privateer captain hesitated at being so bluntly questioned, then made a single unambiguous nod. “Right.”
“I thought I’d changed your mind.”
As Kirk waited for an answer, Kilvennan’s inner struggle, if there was much left, showed only in a single flicker behind his eyes. When he spoke, though, the words had no waver. “There’s not one man in a hundred thousand who’s worth serving under,” he declared. “You haven’t changed my mind on that.”
Kirk felt the stinging eyes of all the people around him, both friend and not-so-friend. He met none but Kilvennan’s. “You made a deal to stick with the Expedition. Is this all your word is worth?”
“I didn’t make any deals to die out here or sacrifice my family.”
“What about the other privateers?” Spock asked. “Have they made their intentions known to you?”
Communicating that he couldn’t read minds, Kilvennan simply shrugged. “We’re not a club.”
Evan Pardonnet made one simple and final appeal. “Please don’t do this . . . don’t give up before we’ve even begun.”
Scanning the mismatched committee of spokesmen, about twenty people speaking for the thousands aboard Conestoga Yukon, Jim Kirk knew what had to happen but couldn’t make himself like it. He managed to stiffen his facial muscles and not let the complications show in his expression. The next few minutes, hours, and days would pilot the future of the Expedition, of the colony at Belle Terre, whether it would indeed survive and thrive, and what mettle these people really had. Having second thoughts was normal enough—he’d had his share. Usually had to fight them. What these people didn’t understand yet was the consequence of compromise.
Unfortunately, he would have to help them learn this painful lesson. Otherwise, they would never fully believe, or fully commit.
“Governor,” he began, changing his tone of voice, “these people have the right to make up their own minds. You’ve been saying all along that personal choice is the hingepin of your colony. We’ll let them go.”
“You’re kidding!” Pardonnet blurted. “After all your talk about holding us together by force if necessary? How it’s not a colony, it’s a fleet, and all that?”
“There’s only so much anyone can do. If they want to leave, we’ll try to keep them safe while they do it.”
“This is a dangerous precedent, Captain! From now on, the minute we run into the slightest trouble, somebody’ll want to turn back. And there’s not even any guarantee that they’ll get back safe.”
“No,” Kirk agreed, “but I can hedge the bet. Captain Battersey, you and your Conestoga are free to go. You can take with you a complement of anyone who wishes to transfer from the other Conestogas, up to the safe capacity of your vessel as determined by Commander Uhura here. We’ll also assign the Impeller to escort you back. You’ll have a Starfleet cutter to see to your safety. And I’ll go one better—I’ll send Lieutenant Chekov back with you, as a navigational and tactical advisor. Does that make you feel any better?”
The paled faces of the citizens mellowed, somewhat sheepishly. Applause broke out again, this time on Kirk’s side. His sudden change disarmed them. Even Billy Maidenshore made a suspicious paddle with his hands that might in wild imagination have been approval. Was it?
The governor valiantly faced Kirk. “I disagree completely with sending the Impeller. The Republic is already scheduled to break off with the Expedition and head off on a tangent mission of its own in another week. . . . Now you’re sending away another Starfleet ship? You’re lessening the protection of sixty thousand people in order to guard one Conestoga that’s breaking the pact.”
“Not everything is numbers, Governor,” Kirk told him evenly. “Uhura, you’ll organize the transfer of anyone who wants to go with the Yukon. And notify Mr. Chekov he’s being reassigned back to Federation space.”
With an uncloaked sigh of frustration, Uhura said, “All right, sir, if this is how it has to be.”
“Very well, carry on. Captain Battersey, Mr. Sulu will be in touch about pulling you out of the formation. Mr. Spock, let’s beam off and get these people on their way, then get on our own. After that, we’ll see what happens to our house divided.”
Enterprise, Mess Hall
“There’s someone stalking this Expedition. It might be from inside or it might be from outside, but we’re being hunted. We have to smoke them out, get a jump on them, force their hand.”
“Or, Jim,” McCoy pointed out, “you could just cliché them to death.”
Jim Kirk allowed himself a chuckle at his own expense.
His breakfast got cold on the table before him. Only the coffee had merited any attention as he stared down into the black pool, one sugar. It was pretty to look at, comforting somehow. Open space, no stars.
At the officer’s table with him, Spock, McCoy, Captain DeSalle of the Republic, and Captain Austin of the Beowulf sat in an uneasy gathering. This had originally been a farewell breakfast for DeSalle, but dissolved almost immediately into a strategy meeting. Unfortunately, the only strategy now was to hold breath and wait.
The Yukon was gone, heading back to Federation space, with the Starfleet cutter Impeller and the Hunter’s Moon as its escorts. Sadness and a sense of failure permeated the Expedition, even though all the other ships were continuing on their way into the unknown, toward a shining planet that would be their new life. Breaking the pact by even one ship was taking a spiritual toll.
“I wish Chekov could’ve been here,” Captain DeSalle mentioned as he picked at his eggs Benedict. “I would’ve like to rib him a couple more times before I veer off.”
“He always has taken you personally for some reason,” McCoy acknowledged. “Want to let us in on that?”
“Uh-uh,” DeSall
e declined, grinning. “Private backstory. Get him to tell you. Just one of those multifaceted episodes that occurred when Jim led a landing party and left us gorillas in command.”
“I should never leave the ship,” Kirk commented. “Every time I do, my officers end up with more ‘backstory.’ ”
“They have to,” Austin said. He found time while devouring his third omelet to eye his comrades teasingly. “It’s the only way they can keep up with the old ‘Shoot first and ask questions later’ Kirk.”
“I always ask questions first,” Kirk told him. “But when it’s time to shoot, shoot. Unfortunately, that’s what we have to do until we get a signal.”
“Who’s going to send it?” DeSalle asked. “Merkling? Chekov? Isn’t that a little obvious?”
Kirk smiled.
“Well, if it’s them, and your perpetrators are with them, they’ll think of it.”
“What if we never get a signal?” Austin asked. “How long do we wait?”
“You don’t wait,” Kirk told him. “I do. You and the Beowulf will continue to escort the Expedition forward. Enterprise will hang back, with Mr. Spock’s long-range sensors on narrow focus.”
“Listening for a distress call?” DeSalle asked.
“That’s right.”
“How long?”
“Until my instincts tell me not to listen anymore.”
DeSalle didn’t like the sound of that. He pushed his plate away and frowned. “If you get one, we’ll already be too far away to assist. Are you sure you don’t want us to stay back with you?”
Kirk somehow nodded and shook his head at the same time, grateful for the offer. “Yes, I do, but no, I don’t. I’d appreciate the backup, but Republic has its own mission now. The critical mass of that blue giant in Pisces Zeta has to be analyzed and diagnosed if the Federation’s going to take action on behalf of those three star systems around it. As of midnight tonight, your timeline tightens. You’ll have to make warp eight all the way as it is. You don’t have a few days to lag back.”
DeSalle shrugged. “Suppose not . . . if we don’t leave now, we’ll have to adjust our course back in the other direction too. It just seems to me you’ll be having all the fun while I’m off measuring gasses and spectral shifts.”
“You might be saving the populations of four outposts and more than ten colonies with those spectral shifts, Captain,” McCoy mentioned. “After all, that’s more in line with a cutter’s duty than what you’ve been doing on the Expedition.”
“True.” DeSalle slugged down the last of his coffee. “I have to admit, it’ll be good to get back to one ship, one crew, and no civilians.” He looked at Kirk. “I haven’t envied you this duty. You’ve had to be an admiral whether you wanted to be or not. A lot of us have bet in the past that you never really wanted to be.”
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Kirk agreed through a grumble. “With people like Billy Maidenshore pulling these people’s strings, the job’s been less than appetizing no matter what rank’s tacked onto it.”
He almost confided in them. As a young captain, he used to fantasize about being admiral, running the operations of several vessels, a whole fleet, and what he would do that had been done before and that never had been done before. Only a few very limited times had he been called upon to choreograph more than one ship in a maneuver, and those had always been fighting ships with fighting crews who knew what was on the line. For this project, he had relinquished those admiralty stripes in order to be a captain again, because this was an independent operation, a milk run in which all the other captains would operate their own ships and all would go smoothly.
Hadn’t somebody said that once upon a time?
No, he couldn’t bring himself to speak quite that openly to other Starfleet captains.
All he could do in the next days would be to watch Republic sail off in a tangent direction, watch the Expedition flow forward on its way, and wait for a signal from behind that might never come.
“What do you think Maidenshore’s up to, Jim?” McCoy prodded. “Assuming you’re still running on that theory.”
“I certainly am. Aren’t you? He all but waved a flag.”
“Captain,” Spock reminded, “we must remain aware that Mr. Maidenshore was here legally and the Yukon’s colonists legally appointed him their spokesman. Starfleet has no jurisdiction regarding either party.”
“Spock, how long have we been in space this time?”
“Five months, eleven days, sixteen hours, twelve—”
“Exactly.” Shoving his plate out of the way, Kirk pressed forward on both elbows. “So much for jurisdiction. We’re the law out here. Billy Maidenshore’s up to something or he wouldn’t have worked so hard to change the minds of all those people.”
Austin bent forward to see past McCoy. “I don’t know why you let him get to you, Jim. It wouldn’t be the first time a corrupt carpetbagging hair-oil peddler decided he wanted some kind of public adulation and actually got suckers to vote for him by promising them whatever they want.”
Kirk leaned forward a little more, and met him with a glare full of absolute agreement.
“And anyone who promises you everything you want,” he stated, “wants everything you have.”
Conestoga Yukon
Sixteen days later
“What’s the signature, Troy? Recognize it?”
“Huh-uh. Neither does the computer, except it says there are at least five distinct—they’re shifting again . . . design’s conventional, though . . . solid hull, contemporary power output, antimatter traces, relative size to average humanoid configuration, conventional thrust—definitely some kind of hardware, Michael, and they’re now on an approach vector. Why wouldn’t we recognize it?”
Those were the funniest markings ever to show up on a screen. Flickers after vibrations, emission traces, then nothing. Then patterns of the flickers would wink again. Always patterns. Nonrandom.
Michael Kilvennan licked his cracked lips and grimaced. “I don’t know. Unless the signature’s being masked or . . . deliberately contaminated to throw us off. Transfer the telemetry readings over to me and let me take a look at those too.”
“Transferring.”
At Michael’s sides, his brother Quinn and Tom Coates watched the computer screen in the Coates’s quarters while Lilian was teaching school. For two and a half weeks Michael had been slipping to the neighbors’ place during his off-watch hours to check with Hunter’s Moon on their constant surveillance of the odd shadows. On-watch was no problem. The Moon’s crew understood something was up. No reason to pretend over there. Here, in the Conestoga with his wife and kids and other people’s kids around, there were limits. Traveling with families—weirder than he’d expected.
At first the shadows had been only minor flickers, unevenly spaced, taken as glitches or distortions on long-range sensors. Ordinarily he would never have paid them any attention.
“Got a good eye, Troy,” Michael murmured. There was no response from Hunter’s Moon.
Tom asked. “What’s that green haze?”
“Trouble, that’s what. Somebody’s trying to look like a nebula or an anomaly. Trying to look like something natural. A ship with regular emissions has to work pretty hard to make this kind of mess out of their broadcasts.”
“Moving at sublight?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know it’s a ship, then?”
“Because natural objects don’t change course.”
Tom Coates straightened to his considerable height. “Somebody’s coming at us, is what you’re saying.”
Michael stood up. “I’ve got to get back to the Moon.”
“You’re leaving us?” Quinn gasped. “With something unidentified coming at us?”
“Can’t defend you from here, Quinn.”
“I’ll go aboard with you!” Tom offered instantly.
“Better if you take care of the families.”
“I will be.”
> “Fine, come on. Quinn, do whatever it takes.” Michael stepped out of the Coateses’ quarters and shouted, “Mae!”
Carrying an armload of toys and computer parts, Mae Kilvennan appeared at the open door of their own family quarters. She blinked twice at the set of her husband’s face, then grimaced. “Oh, I knew it!”
Helpless, Michael shoved his hands into his vest pockets.
Mae didn’t buy it. Dumping her armload inside the door, she stomped out, fuzzy slippers flopping. “How close are they?”
“Ah . . . how close are . . .?”
She socked him in the gut. Pointy fist, too. “How close, Michael!”
“Well, if—we—stay on—this course . . . just let me get my breath—”
“I’ll let you get your breath.” She kneaded her fingernails into his sleeve and dragged him down the narrow companionway as Quinn and Tom Coates followed, glancing at each other. Mae planted her husband in front of the security defense locker. “Open it.”
Michael gaped at her. “I can’t override Battersey’s authority by arming the passengers!”
His wife put her walnut fists on her hips. “They’re not her phasers. They’re ours. We have the right to bear arms. Hand them over.”
He leaned forward and virtually put his nose to hers. “I thought you’d thrown away Governor Pardonnet’s principles.”
“I was an idiot to marry you,” she grumped. “I should’ve married Toby Parker when I had the chance. He understood me. It’s awful to admit your mother was right.”
Her frowsy puff of hair, about the same texture as her fuzzy slippers, caught an orange sheen from a utility light directly over them and made little wedges of pink on her cheeks. Her enormous soggy-puppy eyes had a ridiculous ferocity as she poked the weapons vault.
Michael gazed down at her. She was nearly a head shorter than he was and twice as skinny, her knotted fists attached to sticklike balls of pollen ready to pop off and fly away.
“I love your eyes,” he offered.