by KATHY OLTION
That wasn’t what he got.
The soil sample exploded with the force of a large bomb.
The impact smashed Spock back against the wall, knocking the wind from him. The room swirled with smoke and Spock’s ears rang. He could feel a dozen cuts and gashes on his body from flying glass and debris.
He ignored the wounds, the shortness of breath, and his damaged ears and forced his attention completely on the explosion. He had not expected it, and did not know why it had happened. Simple farming soil did not normally explode when touched with electricity. Clearly the soil problem developing on Belle Terre was far worse than he had first thought.
Alarm bells were sounding throughout the ship as he slowly stood.
“Spock! Spock! Come in.” Captain Kirk’s voice carried over the alarms.
Spock stumbled a few steps through the glass and debris, and tapped the comm link on the wall. “Spock here, Captain.” His own voice sounded hollow and distant in his ears, and he had to lean against the wall for support.
The captain’s voice came back instantly. “Spock, what happened? Are you all right?”
Spock looked through the smoke at the completely destroyed science lab, then said, “I fared better than the science lab. And I made a discovery.”
“What?” Kirk demanded as two emergency personnel shoved the jammed door aside and rushed into the lab. They stopped, clearly stunned at the destruction, then one moved toward Spock as the other moved to stop the small fire in a panel.
Spock understood the men’s reaction. He was surprised as well by the force of the explosion. He had grossly miscalculated and it had cost them a lot of important scientific equipment. It was equipment that would not be easily replaced this far from Federation space. It was also lucky that he had been the only person in the lab at the time. A human would have had little chance of surviving such an explosion.
At that moment Dr. McCoy shoved in through the half-open door and glanced around. “For the love of—” He instantly moved toward Spock, his medical tricorder in his hand. “What in green-blooded blazes have you done?”
“Spock?” Kirk demanded over the comm as McCoy scanned him. “What discovery?”
“Belle Terre is in trouble, Captain,” Spock said.
“Explain,” Kirk said.
“Jim,” McCoy said to the comm unit on the wall before Spock could say a word, “if you want to talk to your first officer, it’s going to have to be in sickbay.”
McCoy waved for the two emergency crewmen to help him with Spock.
“I can walk, Doctor,” Spock said, pushing himself away from the wall.
“I doubt that,” McCoy said, his voice not hiding his disgust. “But you are more than welcome to try.”
Three stumbling, painful steps later Spock realized the logical choice was to have help getting to sickbay. In fact, it was the only choice.
Spock was thankful that McCoy had the good sense to not say “I told you so.”
Lilian Coates awoke with a start, gasping for air, sweat dripping from her forehead, her hair stuck to her cheeks. What an awful nightmare.
She looked around her bedroom, trying to get back something familiar while forcing herself to take a few deep breaths. That was the worst dream she had had since right after the Burn. For weeks after that she had dreamed she was back in the cave with the children, trying to save them, but always failing. Luckily, in real life she had been successful. She, her son, Reynold, and five other children had ridden through the explosion of the planet’s olivium-filled moon inside a cave. After a month or so the nightmares of Reynold dying, just as her husband had done, ended. But the memory of them always seemed just below the surface of every minute of every day.
She took another long, deep breath and blew outward, letting the fresh air clear her mind. Then she swung out of bed and in the faint light she padded to Reynold’s room and glanced in at him. Their cat, Nova, a gift from Dr. McCoy, lay curled around Reynold’s feet. Both seemed to be sleeping fine, so she moved on into the kitchen area, trying not to think about the nightmare until she calmed down some.
A large glass of cold water helped, and she sat at the kitchen table, still cluttered with a few dishes left from last night’s dinner with Reynold and Captain Kirk. Jim had returned to his ship shortly after dinner and she just hadn’t felt like cleaning up. Right now she wished he was here. Someone to talk to, someone to tell her that staying on Belle Terre, not going back to Earth, was the right thing to do for her and Reynold.
Slowly she let the nightmare back into her thoughts.
She is outside, standing in her garden, under clear, sunny skies. Around her all her plants are dead and wilted. Suddenly her feet become rooted to the soil, as if she is a plant as well.
She can’t move.
Then she feels pressure around her face, as if someone is putting a hand over her nose and mouth, choking off her air. But there is no one there.
She can’t run.
She can’t breathe.
She is dying, just as her garden is dying.
Reynold is beside her, also planted, also unable to breathe.
She can’t save him, either.
She knew they were about to suffocate when she awoke.
Awful nightmare.
Another long drink of water pushed the images back again. It seemed she was more worried about her garden, and other plants around the area, than she had even told Jim. No doubt the plants’ dying had something to do with the Burn and the extreme changes in climate and weather. She knew there was a logical explanation for it.
But it seemed her subconscious didn’t.
She glanced at the time. Two hours until she and Reynold had to be up. There wasn’t going to be any getting back to sleep now. Not after that nightmare. She stood and picked up the last of the dishes from last night’s dinner and moved to the sink, where she could wash them.
She was the school administrator and librarian for the colony. She had more than enough work to keep her busy.
Two hours later, as she fixed breakfast for herself and Reynold, the nightmare still haunted her, like a shadow she didn’t want.
As they headed off to school, she looked at the slowly wilting plants in her garden. She knew that part of the nightmare was truth. The question that worried her was, Which part?
Governor Pardonnet smiled at Tegan Welch as if she were a child, giving her his best false smile. She desperately wanted to smash it into his face. It was that smile that had at first convinced her to trust the man, to follow him for light-years to this planet. And it was that smile that was condemning her son, Charles, to death.
She was a short woman, at best five-foot-one, but she knew how to fight and defend herself and her son. She stepped right up close to him, staring up into his face, forcing him to step backward in the tight space of the medical lab. “Take a look in that room again, Governor.” She pointed to a closed door. “My son and four others are going to die unless you get us back to Federation space.”
“I understand that, Ms. Welch,” Pardonnet said, trying to ease sideways from where she had him pinned against a medical stand. The small medical supply room was no bigger than a closet. It was where she had asked for a word privately with him the minute they learned the cause of the illness affecting her son and the others.
“So what ship are you planning to send and when?”
“We’re going to get them to the hospital ship first,” Pardonnet said, “now that we know the cause of their illness.”
She shook her head. “Not enough and you know it.”
All the doctors, including Dr. McCoy from the Enterprise, had been clear that the only way to save these people was to get them a long distance away from olivium and the subspace radiation it was emitting. After the explosion of the Quake Moon, olivium had pelted the planet and spread like a wave through the system. Her son and the four others were allergic to the standard radiation treatments—and all the others McCoy had been able to whip up. Deathly all
ergic.
Her son would die unless he was away from the olivium, and she was going to make sure he got away from it, one way or another.
“We don’t know that getting them to the medical ship won’t be enough,” Pardonnet said, anger in his voice as he pushed past her, trying to get to the door. She moved to block his way.
Pardonnet stopped and stared at her. “Ms. Welch, getting your son out of the atmosphere might stop the spread of the reaction. On the medical ship we can get him and the others into a sterile, protected ward.”
“And what exactly did Dr. McCoy say about that idea?” she asked.
Pardonnet stared and said nothing.
“It seems I remember him saying along the lines of ‘That would work when pigs fly.’ Am I correct?”
“Dr. McCoy can be wrong,” Pardonnet said. “We’re going to try it first, then face the next step.”
“The lives of my son and the others are not worth a ship to you, are they?”
Pardonnet actually looked stunned at the accusation; then his eyes hardened and he said, “I have thirty thousand lives to worry about every minute of every day. Now excuse me.” He shoved past her and out into the ward.
She had been right. Five lives were not worth a ship to the governor.
She stood staring at the medical supplies for a moment. Somehow there had to be a way to get her son away from the olivium—ideally, back to Federation space. But at least away from the olivium first.
And if there was a way, she was going to find it. The first step was getting Charles off the planet and to the hospital ship. From there she’d figure out what to do. If it meant stealing a ship and flying it herself, she’d do it. She just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
But if it did, she wouldn’t hesitate.
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OUR FIRST SERIAL NOVEL!
The Final Chapter . . .
The very beginning of the Starfleet Adventure . . .
STAR TREK®
STARFLEET: YEAR ONE
A Novel in Twelve Parts®
by
Michael Jan Friedman
Chapter Twelve
As soon as Hiro Matsura reached the Yellowjacket’s bridge, he took stock of its viewscreen.
He could see what his first officer had described to him via communicator minutes earlier—a formation of fourteen alien ships, each one a deadly dark triangle. And without a doubt, they were bearing down on the colony world from which Matsura’s pod had just returned.
The last time he had seen the aggressors, they had all but crippled his ship—a setback from which the crew of the Yellowjacket was still trying desperately to recover. The ship’s shields, lasers, and atomic weapon launchers had yet to be brought back online, and her impulse engines were too sluggish to be effective.
In short, the Yellowjacket wasn’t fit to engage the enemy. If she entered the field of battle, she would be nothing more than a target—and therefore a liability to her sister ships.
The odds against Matsura’s comrades were considerable. It galled the captain to have to hang back at a safe distance and watch the aliens tear chunks out of their Christophers.
But it didn’t seem like he had much of a choice.
Aaron Stiles glared at his viewscreen, which showed him so many enemy ships that they seemed to blot out the stars.
It would have been a daunting sight even if three of his fellow captains weren’t butterfly catchers. As it was, only he and Hagedorn could point to any real combat experience—a deficit which prevented the five of them from executing maneuvers as a group.
Stiles would have much preferred to fly alongside his old wingmates—veteran space fighters like Andre Beschta and Amanda McTigue and his brother Jake. Then they would have had something.
Of course, Shumar, Dane, and Cobaryn had plenty of former Earth Command officers on their bridges. If they paid them some mind, they might have a chance to come through this.
Yeah, right, Stiles thought. And I’m the King of Tennessee. If he and Hagedorn couldn’t beat four of the triangle ships, how was their little fleet supposed to beat fourteen?
He scowled and began barking out orders. “Raise shields. Power to all batteries. Mr. Bagdasarian, target atomics.”
Weeks, the better weapons officer, was still in sickbay. But with the aliens packed into such a tight formation, Bagdasarian wouldn’t need a marksman’s eye to hit something.
“Atomics targeted,” came Bagdasarian’s reply. And a moment later, he added, “Range, sir.”
“Fire!” bellowed Stiles.
A black-and-gold missile erupted from the Gibraltar and shot through the void in the enemy’s direction. For a fraction of a second, it was on its own. Then four other missiles came hurtling after it.
Apparently, the captain’s colleagues were all thinking along the same lines he was. It was more than he had expected.
As his missile found a target, it vanished in a burst of blinding white light. The other missiles struck the enemy in quick succession, each one swallowed up in a light show of its own.
But when the alien armada became visible again, it wasn’t clear if the atomics had done any damage. The enemy vessels looked every bit as dangerous as they had before.
A voice came through the comm grate in Stiles’s armrest. “Stay outside them,” Hagedorn advised the group. “The longer they remain bunched that way, the better our chances.”
The man was right, of course. Stiles regarded his weapons officer. “Fire again!” he snapped.
The Gibraltar sent a second black-and-gold missile hurtling toward the alien formation. Over the next couple of heartbeats, the other captains followed Stiles’s example.
Unfortunately, their second barrage wasn’t any more productive than the first. It lit up the void for a moment, but the enemy shook off its impact and kept coming.
And by then it was too late to launch a third barrage anyway. They were too close to the aliens to risk atomics.
“Target lasers!” Stiles roared.
As if the enemy had read his mind, the triangle ships abandoned their formation and went twisting off in pairs. Suddenly, they weren’t such easy targets anymore.
“Fire at will!” the captain told Bagdasarian.
The weapons officer unleashed the fury of their laser batteries on the nearest pair of enemy vessels. At the last possible moment, the triangles peeled off and eluded the beams.
Then they came after the Gibraltar.
Stiles glowered at them. “Evade!” he urged his helm officer.
Urbina did her best to slip the aliens’ knot, but it tightened altogether too quickly. The Gibraltar was wracked by one blinding-white assault after another, each barrage like a giant fist punishing the vessel to the limits of her endurance.
A console exploded directly behind the captain, singeing the hairs on the back of his neck. As sparks hissed and smoke billowed darkly, the deck lurched one way and then the other like a skiff on a stormy sea.
But Stiles held on. They all did.
By the time the enemy shot past them, the Gibraltar was in a bad way. The captain knew that even before he was told that their shields were down eighty-five percent, or that they had lost power to the starboard nacelle.
“They’re coming about for another shot at us!” Rosten called out abruptly, her voice hoarse and thin with smoke.
Stiles swore beneath his breath. “Shake them!” he told Urbina.
The helm officer sent them twisting through space, even without any help from their damaged nacelle. And somehow, she did what the captain had demanded of her. She shook the triangles from their tail.
It looked as if they were safe, at least for a moment. Then Stiles saw the two alien vessels sliding into view from another quarter, setting their sights on the poorly shielded Gibraltar.
“Enemy to port!” Rosten called out.
The captain felt his throat constri
ct. This must have been how his brother Jake felt before the Romulans blew him to pieces.
“Target and fire!” he thundered.
If they were going to go down, it wouldn’t be without a fight. Stiles promised himself that.
But before the aliens could get a barrage off, a metallic shadow swept between the Gibraltar and her antagonists. It took Stiles a second to realize that it was one of the other Christophers, trying to shield him and his crew from the enemy.
He couldn’t see the triangles’ weapons ports as they fired, but he saw the ruddy flare of light beyond the curve of the other Christopher’s hull and the way the Starfleet vessel shuddered under the impact.
The captain didn’t know for certain which of his colleagues was risking his life to save the Gibraltar. However, he guessed that it was Hagedorn. It was the kind of chance only a soldier would take.
The aliens pounded the interceding ship a second time and a third, but Stiles wouldn’t let his comrade protect him any longer. Glancing at Urbina, he said, “Get us a clear shot, Lieutenant.”
“Aye, sir,” came the reply.
“Ready lasers,” the captain told Bagdasarian.
“Ready, sir.”
“Fire as soon as you’ve got a target,” Stiles told him.
As Urbina dropped them below the level of the other Christopher, Bagdasarian didn’t hesitate for even a fraction of second. He unleashed a couple of devastating blue laser volleys that struck the enemy vessels from below, forcing them to give ground—at least for the time being.
Stiles turned to Rosten, taking advantage of the respite. “Raise Captain Hagedorn,” he said. “See how badly he’s damaged.”
But when the navigator bent to her task, she seemed to find something that surprised her. “It’s not the Horatio,” she reported crisply. “It’s the Maverick, sir.”
Stiles looked at her. Dane?
