by Tony Daniel
It was as if a collective gasp passed across the Horta now. And what will that punishment be, All Father?
Merely my extreme disappointment, said Spock. I believe that that will sting you far more than any physical retribution I could employ. I will be very, very disappointed in you. You don’t want that, do you?
No! came the collective shout.
Then get back to work, said Spock, and so shall I. And please don’t make me come back down here.
Never! But Speaker from the Stars . . .
Yes?
We . . . I have a suggestion.
I am listening.
Very well, thought Slider Dan. Here is what I propose, All Father . . .
Spock’s mind flooded with their idea. The Vulcan paused to consider what had been put forward.
I will take this under consideration.
I believe it will work, Speaker from the Stars.
As I said, I will consider it and put it before the captain at the appropriate time. In the meantime, you must complete your task here and I must go to return to my duties.
Understood, Speaker from the Stars.
Spock grunted assent and broke his connection with the hive mind. He gazed around.
“So?” said McCoy. “Get your point across?”
“I have delivered the message,” Spock said. “And you, Doctor McCoy?”
“I’ll be damned if I haven’t patched together another Horta,” McCoy replied. “She may be sore for a while—who the heck knows?—but she will live to fight another day.”
“Let us hope the internal struggles are over,” Spock replied. “We haven’t time for such nonsense.”
• • •
The work of carving up the asteroid proceeded more smoothly thereafter, to Mister Scott’s immense relief. With his tunnel rover’s sensor apparatus showing the way, the Horta were proving to be the perfect workforce to exploit and build on its soundings. It seemed they were going to just pull it off.
The scoring cuts were being completed, but all would depend on four successive hammer blows from the ship’s deflector shields and phasers to finish the process. All of the work would come to nothing if the calculations were not correct. The asteroid might break up, or it might not, but the deflector array would likely not be able to push the pieces out of a collision vector with Vesbius—they would either be too small or too large.
Nevertheless, Scotty found himself humming “The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond” as he worked with the Horta. Whatever the outcome, it was going to be one of the most glorious demolition projects in history, and he was happy to be the chief engineer on an undertaking of such epic scale. This was not because he wanted fame, but because Scotty felt he was putting his skills to their fullest possible use. And that was all a good engineer should ever want, in Scotty’s estimation.
The work proceeded. The asteroid drew closer and closer to the planet.
It’s going to be as close as close can be, Scotty thought. But he smiled when he considered the prospect, for with each passing hour he became more and more convinced that this harebrained scheme of Spock’s might actually work.
Fifteen
Hannah Faber surveyed the motley collection of ships and lift vehicles that the settlement had assembled to aid the evacuees who were attempting to leave the planet before the asteroid arrived. When she had returned it had become apparent to all that repairs on the sabotaged underground shelters were not going to be completed in time. The Exos movement had not succeeded in its plan to destroy the structures entirely, but they may as well have, for they succeeded in making the shelters impossible to inhabit at the crucial moment they were needed. For all practical purposes, they may as well have collapsed the mountains on top of them.
This left five shelters that were inhabitable, each by three thousand people, if as many as possible were crowded in. With fifteen thousand of the settlement thus accounted for, this meant five thousand people must flee. There was no other choice. As the Enterprise’s Mister Spock might say, the logic was inescapable. They did not even address the problem of what would happen after the strike. Once away, the evacuees could not remain in space or they would die just as surely as they would had they remained on the surface of the planet.
Hannah did hope that the Horta would succeed and the strike would be averted. But to plan on that happening and do nothing else was madness. Her priorities were her people and her planet.
With the Enterprise’s aid, a temporary habitat was established on Toro, the smaller of the Vesbian moons. But this was not a permanent solution. After the initial asteroid strike, those in the lunar habitat would have to be transported back to the planet surface where they must take their chances. Yes, relief ships would come from Starbase Twelve, but there were not enough resources in the entire sector to keep the colony supplied indefinitely. Mister Spock had estimated that the Federation could supply aid for approximately a year after the disaster, but at that point there was nothing more that could be done without the expenditure of enormous resources. Vesbius was simply too far away from the heart of the Federation for mass transport of goods. The colonists would either have to come up with a solution, or they would slowly die of starvation and lack of medical supplies.
The problem was, there simply were not enough ships. Hannah had counted and recounted the berth spaces, calculated what it would take to cram every nook and cranny with people, to no avail. The numbers did not match up.
There were five thousand to be evacuated, and there were twenty-eight hundred spaces available. She knew the Enterprise could temporarily take two thousand. Kirk had said that was his absolute upper limit, which was barely sustainable for a day or so. Multiple trips to the Toro habitat would deliver three hundred more. The remaining ships, shuttlecraft included, accounted for, at most, five hundred more slots.
That left twenty-two hundred souls with no means of escape.
One thing Hannah was sure of was that none of those who must remain would be children. But, because Vesbian had such a fertile population, a good portion of those without berths must, nonetheless, be mothers or fathers of Vesbian children.
Those children were going to lose a parent, perhaps both. There simply were not enough single and childless people to substitute, even though almost all of those who were had volunteered to remain on the surface.
She herself would be among those remaining on the surface.
The settlers who were evacuating or sending off children had moved away from their homes and were beginning to assemble in tent-covered enclaves near the ships. Among these were many families, for although some parents had decided to leave the children in the shelters and take the ships away, others had decided the family must remain united. The choice was up to them. Hannah had made the plea to the Planetary Council that parents should be the ones who made the decision, and the Council had acquiesced. But the failure of the autoimmune rejection drugs had made clear that if the children left Vesbius for a lengthy amount of time, they would be the first to experience the rejection response that had almost killed Hannah on the trip to Janus VI.
As Hannah passed among the refugee tents of the waiting families, many eyes followed her, particularly the eyes of children. She stopped here and there to pat a head or say hello. One little girl was playing with a doll, and Hannah joined her for a while, losing herself in the familiar childhood ritual. But then the little girl asked her, “What is it like in space?” She pointed to her doll. “Is Jillie going to like it?”
It took Hannah a moment to swallow the lump in her throat and reply.
“Jillie might be a little frightened,” she said, “but she will not have to be there long. And then you and she will be back on the ground and we will take care of you.”
Somehow or another, Hannah thought, I swear that we will.
Two days until impact. It had seemed, at least momentarily, that the Exos movement on the planet was stymied, if not disbanded, as the last of the days before the asteroid arrived were upon
them all—at least Hannah had hoped so. But her hopes proved to be misplaced. As she got into her transport sled to make her weary way back to the capital complex, Hannah received an emergency call from Fussdesberge, a wealthy and environmentally blessed sector of the settlement near a rushing river that fell from the mountains and fed the rich barley fields below.
Ferlein, recovered and faithful as always, remained with her as a bodyguard. Her father had replaced Hox with a woman from his own security detail. Hannah had gone to school with her, though they had not gotten along back then. Frances Meredith was a by-the-book, rule-following sort, and Hannah was a free spirit. While their personal relationship might be prickly, Hannah didn’t have the slightest doubt Meredith would defend her to the death.
Another lesson learned, Hannah thought. Trust your own intuition over some applicant’s impressive résumé.
They arrived at dusk at the Fussdesberge courthouse, just as the moons were rising. A scene of pandemonium stretched out below. People from the countryside surrounded the courthouse steps. They held up lighted nightsticks, the illumination source commonly used for evening travel in the colony, and several groups gathered around roaring bonfires. Hannah could not be sure, but as they swooped in closer, they seemed to be burning straw effigies and, here and there, a Planetary Council flag.
All the makings of an angry mob, Hannah thought.
Meredith flew the sled into their midst, and the crowd parted reluctantly before the big sled shoved them aside with its antigrav pulsars. They landed at the base of the courthouse steps, and Hannah stepped off the sled and walked up to the courthouse door.
Xart, the district’s chief gendarme, stood there. He was a minor party official and had received his appointment as a sinecure after his father’s political group had won the previous election. Xart was a slight man and did not look the part of a policeman. In fact, he appeared to be about to throw up his dinner.
“I don’t know what to do, ma’am,” the man proclaimed upon seeing Hannah. “They started showing up just after the court finished its final session. Most of these are not from around here—seems like they’ve been sledded in.”
“Are they making demands?” asked Hannah.
“Sure they are,” said the gendarme. “They want Bellamy Hox released—that’s what they want. They want him free.”
“Hox?” said Hannah. “On what grounds?”
“The sentence came in today,” said Xart. “He was found guilty of attempted murder, of you, ma’am. The judge wasn’t sure what to do with him, since anywhere we put him would be taking up the space for an innocent person. So she decided—”
The judge stepped out of the doorway and Hannah recognized her as Ellen Freitag, an old friend of her mother’s and one of the leaders of the expedition that had originally settled the planet. “I decided that the scumbag could stay on the surface in jail and take his chances. After that, we’ll ship him off planet to a penal colony. He can take his chances with the autoimmune vaccine. Maybe there will be an improved version by then.”
“That seems . . . harsh,” said Hannah.
“A Federation colony will be able to help him much better than we can here, particularly considering our current circumstances. As a matter of fact, I’ve arranged for him to be taken away in the brig of the Enterprise.” Freitag chuckled. She was known for her tough sentences and for running a fair courtroom, but she was no politician.
The last thing they needed at the moment, reflected Hannah, was a judge lecturing this group on the fact that they had no right to challenge a ruling that was effectively a death sentence for the convicted.
On the other hand, nearly two thousand innocents were under a death sentence at the moment, and they had not tried to kill fifteen Horta and Hannah herself.
“Give us Hox!” cried someone in the crowd.
“He was trying to save Vesbius!” shouted another.
“Yes, exactly. That is exactly right.” It was a voice Hannah recognized. The front of the crowd parted, and Jasper Torn stepped forward from the mob. “Why don’t you get us off this hellhole permanently? It’s the least you can do after causing such a good man to suffer.”
“Jasper?” gasped Hannah. “You are a Planetary Council member. You have to realize this is madness!”
“What I realize is that the time has come to bring everything out in the open, Hannah Faber,” he said. His constant supercilious smile never left his handsome face. “We demand an end to sham democracy and cowering. Let the strong survive. And if you will not grant it, we will bring you down.”
He turned to the crowd and held up a fist in the air, then opened it into five outstretched fingers.
Everyone knew what he was doing. This was the salute of the Exos movement.
“Jasper! You’ve joined the Exos?”
Torn turned and smiled at Hannah. “I am the Exos. Don’t you see, Advisor? Do you really think Hox and Merling acted alone? Do you think the shelter bombs planted themselves?”
This was too much for Ferlein and Meredith. Their hands brought phasers from hidden pockets, and these were pointed at Torn.
“No,” said Hannah to her bodyguards. “Lower your weapons.” She turned back to Torn. “What are you saying, Jasper? What have you done?”
“What needs to be said,” Torn replied. “And now we will again do what needs to be done.”
He turned to the mob. “Are you with me?” he shouted.
“Yes!” a ragged chorus called back.
Hannah had been his political opponent, but she had not suspected Jasper Torn of being a terrorist, much less the mastermind of Exos. But Hannah was not surprised by the mob sentiment. Since she had been back, the call for freeing Hox had grown.
More shouts arose from below the courthouse steps, and a rotten apple flew by, barely missing Hannah’s head. Soon they would be throwing harder material. Hannah knew that she had to do something to oppose these calls for vigilante justice. If Xart wasn’t going to help her—and it was very apparent that he was scared out of his boots—then she would have to do it alone.
Ferlein and Meredith moved to stand on either side of her. “We have to get you out of here, ma’am,” said Ferlein, scowling over the mob.
“No,” Hannah said. “That I will not do.”
But what action could she take?
Then the problem was solved for her.
“Statement! A statement for the press!” It was Johnny Sanchez, a reporter for the Daily Buzz. Sanchez was a one-time Exos supporter who had supposedly “reformed” and now passed himself off as a serious journalist. Hannah knew he was clever and amusing, and he had developed quite a following. His newsfeed was the third most popular on the planet. Many of the planet’s residents had the Daily Buzz set to receive on their portable communicators. Through him, Hannah could talk directly to the people, if she could get past Torn.
He appeared to be primping, attempting to maneuver his way between Hannah and Sanchez. The reporter had himself hardwired with recording devices.
“Yes, Johnny,” Torn said. “Finally, the time has come—”
“The Council member forgets himself,” Hannah said loudly, cutting off Torn’s oration and moving up beside him. “I have a message from the chancellor’s office, and I have a victim’s statement.”
Sanchez immediately turned to face her. Here was better news than some minor Council member’s speechifying.
“The fact that Bellamy Hox almost killed me makes no difference in the larger scheme of things,” said Hannah. “If it had not been for Doctor McCoy, I would be dead. Yet I believe I was only an afterthought for Hox and the Exos terrorist movement.”
Cries of “Lies!” and “Release Hox!” But there were a few in the crowd who had begun to listen. Some even appeared to realize that Hannah was responding intelligently and coherently, and she was not merely shaking a fist at them.
“The target of Hox and his accomplice, Major Johan Merling, was another species, an intelligent, thinking, and fee
ling species. They are called the Horta. They may be utterly different from us, but they are allies, and we will soon owe these creatures our lives. And maybe someday we shall call them friends. They deserve justice, and I believe justice has been served today.”
“Alien scum!” shouted Torn. He moved toward Hannah as if to finish what Hox had started, but Ferlein and Meredith quickly interposed themselves. “Give us Hox!” he contented himself with shouting. “Give us Hox!”
Hannah smiled and continued addressing Sanchez. The newsman stood one step below her and was looking up at her. He appeared mesmerized, whether by her beauty or the scoop he was getting, it was impossible to say. From his position, Hannah figured the vid was showing her at a commanding angle. Good.
“Aliens? Absolutely, the Horta are aliens,” Hannah said. “But the greatest victim of Hox and Merling was not alien at all.” She reached down and put a hand on Sanchez’s shoulder, looked him as deeply in the eyes as she could, and addressed Sanchez and his audience. “These criminals’ greatest victim was you, the citizens of this colony. In attempting to destroy the Horta, they were attempting to murder Vesbius herself—our beloved planet—for all time.”
• • •
Lieutenant Uhura was monitoring the Daily Buzz feed on the Enterprise. She turned to the captain, saying, “There’s an interesting development on the planet, sir.”
“Can it wait?”
“I think you should see this, Captain,” said Uhura. “Shall I pull it up on viewscreen?”
Kirk turned to his communications chief. Uhura understood the demands on his time and she didn’t make such requests without good reason. He nodded his assent, and she keyed the newsfeed to the main viewscreen.
Hannah was on the steps of some government building. The feed vid revealed a crowd surrounding her.
No, not a crowd, thought Kirk. A mob.
What was she up to?
Kirk watched as Hannah tried to talk down the mob singlehandedly.
Then a challenger appeared, a man Kirk thought he recognized.
Hannah’s response.
