STAR TREK: NEW EARTH - CHALLENGER

by Diane Carey

  “Let’s have those damage reports.”

  Engineer Herne made no acknowledgments, but simply reached across the gap between his station and the captain’s chair and handed Kirk an engineering padd.

  The bridge stood silent all around as the captain studied the information flowing from control teams dotted throughout the starship. Analyses, readings, measurements, stress limits, quick assessments, best guesses. Despite the captain’s empty feeling here on the bridge, the rest of the crew seemed to be handling themselves like the clockwork they were reputed to be.

  He handed the padd back to Herne. “Full ahead, Mr. Sulu. Reestablish warp factor nine.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.” The jubilance in Sulu’s voice was sharply offset by the bridge-wide understanding that they’d almost been wrecked here and now.

  At the rail, Herne scanned the padd himself, unspoken opinions flashing across his face. “A burst of speed is one thing,” he finally said. “Warp nine sustained, well—” He interrupted himself with a shake of his head.

  Kirk ignored the unrequested comments. When he turned to face the main screen and wait out their problem, Spock was down here at his side.

  “Any ideas, Spock?” Kirk asked quietly. “Can we keep up?”

  “I do not believe so,” Spock admitted. “However, the Enterprise has risen above tolerance at your call in the past.”

  Flattered, Kirk gazed at him. “That’s quite a thing for you to say. I appreciate it.”

  “I never deny the facts.” But Spock’s expression softened noticeably.

  “Mr. Sulu, return us to warp nine again. All systems comply. Shut down all the unnecessary systems taxing the warp core.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Aye, sir,” Herne complained.

  Spock stepped closer. “Captain, there is a possibility . . . what if these probes are intergalactic?”

  “I guess we won’t arrive for two thousand years.”

  For a moment Spock seemed unable to decide whether that was a joke or just a manifestation of Kirk’s sheer will. Kirk eyed him with empathy.

  “You’re worried about the planet, the olivium,” Kirk proposed. “I wasn’t admitting to myself that my mind’s back there too. But—no point worrying. After all, we’ve been gone for weeks. There probably won’t even be a colony when we get back.”

  “You’re concerned about Captain Lake?”

  “Lake? No . . . not him. Not directly. It’s Keller who worries me.”

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “We’ve just left sixty-four thousand Federation citizens and the technological key to the future in the hands of a man who was rushed from second officer to first, and is suddenly the de facto captain of the only fighting ship there. He’s not even a full commander yet. And that ship’s a ragged mess.”

  Spock offered a decidedly emotional expression of solace. “You can’t be two places at once, Jim.”

  “I know, I know . . . and I need you here with me. A man in Roger Lake’s state of mind, he’ll erase himself from the equation soon enough. Just how much damage he might do before that happens, Spock, I wish I knew. All my instincts tell me something’s about to crack at Belle Terre.”

  He paused. His elbow pressed into the leather nap of the chair’s arm. With that hand he rubbed his jaw and clung to his sense of physical form, willing luck and hope back through space to those who needed it most.

  “When it happens,” he added, “I’m afraid Nick Keller’s in for the rocket ride of his life.”

  Peleliu

  In orbit at Belle Terre

  The whole ship pounded and throbbed. Or was it just his head?

  And his feet. In search of a second wind, Keller ran down the corridor on deck three, the thin padded carpeting providing a dutiful bounce to each stride.

  “When did it start?”

  “About half an hour ago.” Tim McAddis ran at his side. “I heard it start just as I went off watch. What a clatter! Sounded like somebody was peeling bulkheads!”

  “You didn’t call security?”

  “And what? Open fire? Nothing else can stop it.”

  “Probably not even that.”

  “You better deal with it yourself.”

  “Stay behind me.” With a cautious hand extended, Keller dropped to a quick stride as they rounded the circular corridor to the occupied quarters. Many of the bunk decks had been shut down because of damage. Only half of this deck had been cleared for use, and all crew quarters were tripled and quadrupled. Guests were doubled. Unfortunately.

  He led McAddis forward. Slower now, they came around the bend in the deckscape. They passed two unremarkable quarters before spying the incredible result of what McAddis had heard.

  They spotted the third door. Keller wished he were armed. But in orbit?

  The blue panel of the third door actually jutted out into the corridor now, its twisted verilux layers peeled one by one into jagged spines and pressed in every direction.

  “My God,” McAddis gasped. “Look at the door—”

  “Simmer down.” Keller pressed him back and made him stay still. The door had a gaping hole where the seal should have been. The panel had been kicked in, then pried back out until an opening appeared.

  Kicked in? Bonded verilux sheets?

  The quarters inside were dark, lit only by the light from the corridor. As if putting his head into a guillotine, he peeked inside.

  “Savannah?”

  “Come on in.”

  She was alive, at least, and conscious. No sound of panic or stress. Fortified, he ducked through the bent door.

  Inside he found himself nose-up to Savannah Ring’s belt buckle. The rest of her was hanging upside down from a pair of gravity boots attached to the ceiling brace, elbows against her sides, arms folded across her chest. Her cheeks were flushed, dark chestnut hair hanging, but she seemed otherwise alive and well.

  To Keller’s left, just inside her handiwork, stood Zoa. The Rassua’s legs were braced, a stance oddly familiar now, her hands hidden behind her back, gold face strict. She eyed him but said nothing. She simply stood before the bulkhead, claiming her space. There was no sign of anger, no sweat, scratches or blood, nor even a sliver of the demolished door to testify against her. She protested not at all.

  Both women’s possessions cluttered the quarters, one bunk area with Savannah’s beakers of wasps, molds, and fungi, the other bunk stacked with toothy devices that might be weapons of Zoa’s preference. Keller hoped they were weapons.

  To get down to Savannah’s face, he lowered himself to one knee. “Mornin’.”

  “Sheriff.”

  “Zoa beat up the door?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some temper. You say something about her mother?”

  “I locked her out. I needed sleep.”

  The gravity boots hummed softly, their power system reenergizing automatically.

  “She do this to you?” Keller asked.

  “No.” Savannah managed a shrug as she glanced at Zoa. “I sleep this way. It’s good for circulation.”

  “Hanging like a bat?”

  Her eyes shifted from Zoa to him. “What’ve you got against bats?”

  With no way to argue, he pushed to his feet, straightened, and sighed. “Wednesday Addams grows up.”

  McAddis peeked in past the twisted door, but didn’t interfere as Keller strode three steps over to Zoa. She didn’t move, but followed him with her eyes, never blinking.

  “You bend this door?” he asked.

  “I bend.”

  “We’re in orbit. You’ll be debarking as soon as we clear customs and quarantine. Two days at most. Why can’t you just be nice for two days?”

  “She lock me out.”

  “Well, she shouldn’t have, but this . . .”He held his hand out to the demolished panel.

  Zoa’s tattooed shoulders flexed very slightly, not quite a shrug. Her lined lips were silent.

  “We can’t have this.” Keller�
��s tone suggested he understood both sides. He didn’t really. “Here’s how it is with me. If you don’t discipline yourself, then I’ll discipline you. No explosions of temper allowed.”

  “Temper?” Zoa’s braids swung as she snapped her dot-eyes to him. “I have no temper.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I am trained diplomat. Among my people I am revered for being control.” Her chin went up. “I am Vulcan-like.”

  Keller stepped back a half pace and regarded this problem as she stood before him. He didn’t seem to have any effect on her.

  “All right,” he gruffed. “You wanted a job on board. You’ve got one. Unbend that door.”

  Leaving her there with her thoughts, if she had any, he stepped back out, trying to hide his eagerness to escape from the Hall of Dread.

  McAddis was waiting with a sly look.

  The crumpled door creaked a little under Keller’s pressing fingers. “Ought to keep her busy for two days,” he muttered.

  “You’re dreaming.” Running his fingernails through his short blond hair, McAddis grimaced doubtfully. “Two days can be an eternity. You better find some spare quarters and separate those women.”

  Relieved now that he knew the port side hadn’t fallen off, Keller hung a hand on McAddis’s shoulder and slumped against the doorjamb. “Oh, I dunno, Tim. Something tells me those two belong together. In the same mausoleum.”

  “Bridge to Mr. Keller. Report immediately.”

  Leaving McAddis back at the bent doorway, Keller quick-paced to the nearest wall mount and hit the comm button. “Keller. You rang?”

  Chan’s voice was not in joke mode. “Sir, we have yellow alert!”

  “You’re kidding, in orbit?”

  “Better get up here, Nick . . . please.”

  Yikes.

  “Be right there.” Keller sprang for the turbolift. “Tim, saddle up!”

  * * *

  Nick Keller and Tim McAddis plunged out of the lift and onto the bridge, but found conditions relatively stable. At least, that was all they could see. The ship was moving, though, and it shouldn’t be. On the main screen, which ordinarily would be showing a vista of space in the general direction they were heading now showed, as was usual during Gamma Night, only a clouded crackling gray mass that might be space or might be almost anything in it.

  James Kirk had left them to hold the fort, and they were leaving the gates. In the command arena, Roger Lake was giving orders to Hurley and Makarios, who now glanced back at Keller, but dared do nothing more, nor even look again.

  The blue-shadow form of Shucorion stood on the starboard side, watching McAddis’s science boards with studious fascination and a worried expression. Whatever was going on, he didn’t like it.

  At Keller’s side as he moved slightly to his right, Communications Officer Tracy Chan kept her voice just enough above a whisper to avoid flagging the captain’s suspicious ears. “It’s a distress signal from Pandora’s Box. It came in just as Gamma Night was falling. They’re on the other side of the sun. We’re answering.”

  “During Gamma Night? We shouldn’t be moving at all.”

  She submitted to Keller’s whisper with a worried plea. “We can’t even get a reading of the mining ship’s position. The whole signal could be a misinterpretation.”

  “Or something else. Tracy, find out the last known location of the mine ship and its assignment. Tim, go, go.”

  McAddis stepped past him and beelined to the science station, where he set immediately to work, trying to hide a frantic edge.

  To Chan, Keller murmured, “Does the colony know where we are? Did we file a flight plan?”

  Her eyes full of worry, Chan simply pressed her lips tight and shook her head.

  “Nick—good, you’re here.” Roger Lake came to life on the lower deck. “Come on down. I’ll show you this. Look at the helm. We’ve got this Night thing whipped.”

  Keller dropped to the lower deck. “Sir, we shouldn’t be moving at all.”

  Lake spread his hands. “Think I been sitting on my thumbs? I got this blackout thing figured out. I can plot the way over there without running into anything. Watch some of these tricks.”

  Without the slightest protocol, he butted Makarios out of the helm chair and slid in there himself. The captain at the helm? Then who would command? Would he try to do both? Under casual conditions, maybe. In a crisis—not a chance.

  “Nick,” Tracy Chan called quietly.

  “Yes?”

  “The mine ship’s last known position was at the ice asteroid near the fifth planet. They were supposed to be there yesterday morning at last report. Nowhere near where we’re headed.”

  “Understood. Hush, now.” Thus armed, Keller came around and stepped down to the lower deck and spoke clearly. “Captain, the target area’s not where the penitentiary ship’s supposed to be. It might be a phantom call. Might not be Pandora’s Box at all.”

  Could be a trap, could be a mistake, could be anything. Keller held his breath, hoping his captain hadn’t crossed the desert too far to see even something so obvious.

  For a moment, it seemed his words might be sinking in. Then Lake shook his head. “We’ll go have a look anyway. Can’t hurt and it might prove some things to some people. Jim Kirk’s not the only one who can run a solar system. This is our chance to show him he’s not the prettiest duck in the pond.”

  “What if there’s something over there that hasn’t been plotted? Like enemy ships?” Keller stepped closer. “Captain, somebody might be decoying us.”

  “Don’t be paranoid. Not the Blood, the Kauld, nor anybody has a ship that can match us, even in the condition we’re in.”

  “Captain, that isn’t true. Tactics can outplay strength and you know it. We’re not strong enough right now to be playing games.”

  “Our phaser banks are back to eighty-two percent. That means we outgun anything in this cluster. Our shields are up to eighty-five. Means we can take whatever anybody around here has to spit at us. Unless the Klingons are out here, we’re all set. I’ve been working on this Gamma Night technique. I’ve been sending out mapping probes. We can do dead reckoning with the computer. Not plow into planets and asteroids. Within one system, it’s not so tough.”

  “But ships—how can you see ships?”

  “Can’t. Doesn’t matter. They’ll stay away from us. We’re the biggest kid in the yard.”

  Shut out, Keller stiffly climbed back to the upper deck where McAddis, tense and stiff-lipped, was waiting for him.

  He couldn’t quite look McAddis in the eye. Instead he turned to watch the unhelpful forward screen. “Kirk told me not to go out in the dark. He was warning me to stay home till the streets are safe. This is what he meant, Tim . . . Gamma Night.”

  And here they went, out into the dark, into somebody else’s forest.

  “I have a sudden urge to call Savannah up here,” he complained. “Bet she speaks vampire.”

  Unable to muster a smile, McAddis could only shrug. He was scared. He deserved to be.

  Were there any words of encouragement or hope a first officer should cough up at a time like this? The maneuver was risky, chivalrous only in name. If they could manage to get around the masked sun, how could they possibly track down one ship on the entire other side of the solar system? How could Lake even be sure of the integrity of the distress call?

  Still, they hadn’t signed onto a Starfleet ship to sit in the garage. Lake was justified in his decision, and carried the authority to render such judgments. No one had ever really made a regulation that clearly outlined the difference between hardy martial spirit and plain recklessness. Sometimes those were absolutely twins.

  What was that buzz? The yellow alert notice? An underlying crackle accompanied every jangle of the constant background noise of the alert-status alarm. As he listened closer, then, he noticed that the secondary crackle wasn’t quite keeping time with the alert. When it stopped for a moment, then picked up again, he started look
ing for it.

  And found it on the deck, on the far side of the science trunks. A bosun in a spark smock and inhalant visor worked with a nozzle, a hose, and a sizable red canister plastered with warning labels. The hair—Keller knew that black ducktail anywhere.

  “Bonifay! What’re you doing on the bridge?”

  “Sealing this crack.” Zane Bonifay looked up through the visor, then pointed at an awful-looking gap between the deck carpet rim and the trunk housing. “Or would you rather fall through the deck?”

  “What’s this cannister?”

  “Neutronium tripolymer coagulant foam. I love this stuff. Fills any gap. You just spray it in and it expands to fit. Dries instantly, hard as fused rhodinium. Don’t touch!” He elbowed away Keller’s venturing hand. “If it gets in your lungs, the ship’ll have a new figurehead.”

  Keller backed off, but watched for a moment as Bonifay loaded the ominous crack with the bluish-gray foam sputtering from the nozzle he held. About the consistency of cake frosting, it had a texture like stucco as it fitted itself into the separated seam, then swelled and instantly hardened. Better living through chemicals.

  “Lake’s all wrapped up in this.” Tim McAddis was watching the captain, there on the lower deck, eyes fixed on the main screen. “Maybe it’s time to flip that coin, Nick.”

  “Now, don’t start.” But Keller pulled the commemorative from his pocket and spent a cleansing moment turning it in his fingers. “This is only for emergencies.”

  Zane Bonifay snapped to sudden interest, and bolted to his feet. He shoved the visor off his face and clicked the nozzle trigger off. “Hey, that’s my shuttle coin!”

  Keller’s hand met him in the chest. “Back off, butch. The coin’s mine. Tim gave it to me. Somebody I like way better than you.”

  “He stole it from me!”

  McAddis scowled. “I won it. I out-slicked you for once. Fess up.”

  “You couldn’t out-slick a five-year-old. You cheated.”

  “Oh, one ape saying the other one stinks.”

  “Keep it down,” Keller warned. “Tim, how long till we get around the sun?”

  “At one-tenth sublight . . . thirty-two minutes.” Lowering his voice, McAddis leaned close. “Nick, you’ve got to influence him somehow. He’ll get us killed yet.”