STAR TREK: NEW EARTH - CHALLENGER

by Diane Carey

  “Yes. We had less than ten men in each ship. Some had no more than three. You drove us away and we had no strength to stay.”

  “How long has this sickness been on you?”

  “Long enough to kill nearly three-quarters of our trained fighting men. The rest are all dying.”

  “The experiments involved antimatter? Star drive?”

  “Yes.”

  Keller could only muster a hint of hope. “Look, like Shucorion said, there can be winners and winners. The Federation’s been dealing with antimatter and star-drive radiation for a lot longer than any of you. When we get back, we’ll talk to Dr. McCoy. If he doesn’t know what to do, nobody will.”

  “My thanks for your gift of expectation.” Vellyngaith offered a little bow, but he seemed resigned to his fate and trusting to change it only by dying sooner, in the coming violence.

  Keller could read that anticipation in the senior warrior’s face. A disturbing text.

  He went back to the rail, where Savannah had been joined by a rather mussed set of Bonifay and Shucorion. Zoa, standing at her tactical board and fine-tuning the weapons, didn’t look, but she was listening.

  “I beat back a fleet of invalids,” he mused. “Isn’t that happy to know?”

  “Don’t get discouraged,” Savannah warned. “Not at this point.”

  “No room left for that,” he commented. “Let’s saddle up and make sure we’re as ready as we can be to engage this thing. Zane, how many crew have we got on board, total?”

  “We only kicked off ten people to go with Mr. Scott. Four Starfleet men, because Mr. Scott wanted some security hands, and only six of the Blood guys would go. They only went because Shucorion convinced them that nobody would believe the Kauld people if there weren’t some Blood to confirm the story.”

  “Everybody else stayed?”

  “Twenty-nine, counting Shucorion’s guys. Mostly people who actually worked on building the ship. We sort of got galvanized.”

  Enheartened, Keller was also dismayed by the heightened numbers of lives involved. Not that a few dozen this way or that way mattered much anymore, give or take the Kauld planet, Belle Terre, and anybody else in the path of the whoozit flying toward them.

  “What do you think our optimum crew would be?”

  “I’d say . . . about sixty.”

  “My guess was fifty-five. We’re about half manned, then.”

  “Would’ve had more,” Bonifay said, “except we launched so suddenly, lot of our people got left behind. Bet they were mad.”

  “Bet they’ll be glad later. Man the critical posts and put everything else on standby. Double up on anything you think needs extra hands. I wish I could tell them what to get ready for. I feel like I should have some predictions.”

  “No one expects that from you,” Shucorion told him. “Tell them what you know. Then do what must be done. You must lead them, not herd them.”

  Keller smiled. “I like that. Thanks.”

  Tired, overworked, and hotheaded, Bonifay perked up and presented the chip on his shoulder to Shucorion. “Just because he asked you to exec, Nick doesn’t have to run his ship your way. You’re not one of us.”

  Though put off some, Shucorion shifted a glare of intrusion to Bonifay. “You should not address your commander so casually on his own deck, child.”

  “Child?”

  Nick stepped between him and Shucorion. “Gentlemen,” he said, consciously mimicking Kirk’s tone of command. “That’s enough. Bonifay, you’re on report for disrespect to a superior. Shucorion, Bonifay is an officer, not a child. Now back to work.”

  Keller stepped out of the overflow zone, feeling like a bad actor pretending to be a Starfleet captain.

  After a few moments, Keller saw Shucorion slip around to the other side of the deck, leaving Bonifay grumbling curse spells under his breath. Keller found himself missing Roger Lake.

  “What’s this?” Shucorion caught everyone’s attention by speaking up sharply and pointing at a rectangular panel in the top of the bulkhead near the black dome. It was flashing bright amber.

  The alert panel!

  “Sensors must have something!” Bonifay jumped to the nav station and played the board. “Nick—”

  He suddenly lost his voice. So despite his bravado, Bonifay was afraid too.

  The revelation struck Keller with the force of a slap. “Put the shields up. Everything we’ve got. Do we know if the thing can read through deflectors?” He started toward Vellyngaith, but suddenly turned back to Bonifay. “You’d know that. You said the ’bots were raiding the storage facilities. What kind of protection did they have?”

  “Not enough.”

  “Help me!”

  “Uh—they had grade-seven shields, if we needed them.”

  “Were they up?”

  Bonifay stared at him, thinking back. “You know, I don’t think they were. . . .”

  “Then keep ours up. Let’s keep it from finding the olivium as long as we can. Let’s get in for a good look.”

  Vellyngaith came to life. “If you go too near, it will drive you off.”

  “It fired on you?”

  “Some kind of force.” Obviously he couldn’t be clearer.

  Keller nodded and stood between the helm and nav stations, watching the forward screen. “Screen on full magnification. Confirm shields up.”

  “Shields are up,” Zoa endorsed. “Torpedoes are ready.”

  As he squinted at the screen, still unable to see anything concrete out there, no ship, no form, yet knowing the phantom in the darkness had set off the alert grid.

  But it knew them—the ship violently heaved, then slid sideways several hundreds of meters. The crew flew against the rail or controls.

  “Force, Nick!” Savannah called. “Not impact!” She was hanging on to the engineering console.

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  “This screen says, ‘no impact’!”

  “Oh—”

  “It is pushing us!” Vellyngaith shouted.

  “That’s what it hit you with?” Keller called back. “A blast wave? Not an actual blast?”

  “It blew us into an asteroid field where we were damaged! Now it blows your ship away!”

  In over his head? He was in over twenty heads.

  At the nav, Bonifay twisted around. “Shouldn’t we fire at it?”

  “Yes,” Zoa said.

  On the port side, Vellyngaith’s jaw hardened. He doubted success with a simple attack, but offered no alternatives.

  “That’s been tried,” Keller declined. “Save the power.”

  “Photons,” Zoa fumed.

  Bonifay’s head snapped up. “He just said no firing!”

  “Shh.” Keller stopped them with a gesture. “Photons . . .”

  Zoa looked at him. “Yes!”

  “We’ve tried photons against those ’bots,” Bonifay insisted. “Nothing! Nothing at all! Not a scratch!”

  Keller stepped to him. “You tried the torpedoes one at a time?”

  Bonifay paused. “What else?”

  “Zoa! Go down to the armory and bundle the torpedo casings. Put all four into one big salvo. Do you understand?”

  Not only did she understand, but sheer delight glowed in her emotionless blue spots. With an excited series of clumps on those platform sandals, she was gone.

  Wheeeeeeezzzzzzzzmmmmmm

  Keller snapped up. What the hell was this?

  “Losing star drive,” Shucorion reported. “Slipping to sublight.”

  Under their very hands, every system on the bridge flickered, faded, and started to go dark!

  “How could it affect us,” Keller demanded. “We can’t even see it yet!”

  “I see it.” Shucorion was staring at the forward screen.

  Standing beside him, Vellyngaith had stiffened in renewed horror.

  “Nick, we’re losing power!” Bonifay gasped. “Half these systems just went dry!”

  “Everything else is
sputtering,” Savannah confirmed.

  Vellyngaith turned. “We must move away from it or your ship will die!”

  Suddenly Keller wished he hadn’t turned down Mr. Scott’s offer to come along. Maybe they did need an engineer.

  But there was no time left for those thoughts. If they couldn’t get the engines started, they were hanging here with a belly full of bait and the shark was homing in on them.

  On the screen before them, deep in the night, shone a very simple and troubling form, a wobbling water balloon of gases and mercurial liquid. It rolled through space toward them like a child’s toy rolling down a hill.

  It didn’t look scary—until it suddenly filled the whole screen and was still coming. Directly at them. No doubt about that.

  Keller knew when he’d been targeted by a charging bull. Maybe there was a time to turn and run.

  “Full astern while we can still move!”

  Shucorion nodded once, then bent to the helm and forced himself not to look at the screen.

  The engines whined and coughed. The ship moved backward, but without assurance.

  “We don’t have the energy,” Bonifay choked. “It’s sapped our motive power.”

  “Tractor beams on. Set them on the nearest spatial body.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “We’ve got towing engines, remember? Let’s use ’em.”

  “Oh—good idea!”

  Working his white-knuckled hands furiously, Bonifay sought out the nearest solid object in space, a comet that was almost out of tractor range. “Beams on,” he gasped. “I don’t know if they’ll hold.”

  “Haul away!”

  With something to grab, the mule engines took a bite on the comet and sputtered back to life.

  “We’re moving,” Shucorion reported tentatively.

  “Pull away from it. Zane, reel us in as fast as you can.”

  Around them the ship’s systems began to cough and whine, but with more eagerness, as if coming out of respiratory arrest. She was struggling to stay alive against whatever kind of damping field was being thrown by that thing.

  With his fists pressed to his thighs, Keller held his breath in empathy. He peered up at the cobalt ceiling. “Come on,” he whispered, “saddle up . . . come on . . .”

  The tractors buzzed, sucking power from whatever was left. The lights on the bridge began to flicker.

  The tactical board started bleeping furiously, demanding attention.

  “Zoa! I forgot about the photon bundle!”

  He spun to the command chair, but there was no access panel anywhere near the chair yet. He was obliged to jump to the quarterdeck and hit the tactical comm. “Zoa, aim and fire!”

  Without acknowledgment, the forward weapons port shot a bright funnel.

  Bonifay bent over the sensors. “Range, two hundred thousand kilometers . . . two-thirty . . . two-fifty . . . sixty . . .”

  “Zoa, detonate!”

  The screen lit up, the brightness compensators briefly failed, and the whole crew was blinded. When Keller opened his eyes, all he saw was bubbles popping. “Shucorion, keep us moving! Dang—”

  He clapped a hand over his eyes. Why had he thought it would be such fun to watch four bundled torpedoes detonate at close range?

  “Y’know, I knew that was a mistake,” he grumbled. “Something inside just . . . I knew.”

  “The thing’s slowing down!” Bonifay called. “Not stopping though. The blast might’ve confused it.”

  “Confusion will not remain,” Vellyngaith warned.

  Keller tried to step past the command chair. “No, I don’t expect—ow!”

  Might’ve been wiser to let the eyes adjust before he tried to cross the bridge. His foot caught on something, he spilled forward and tumbled into Shucorion’s chair. Shucorion, fighting to urge the ship around so she could go faster—because she could barely be handled on an astern course—only glanced at him before setting back to work. Keller caught the glance between the bursting bubbles, and somehow it sustained him. He pulled himself back to his feet.

  “Are we making any headway?”

  “Some,” Shucorion said. “Gaining speed—”

  The lights on the bridge flickered again, but this time came back on with more strength.

  “Power’s coming back,” Bonifay reported, “but sluggish.” He shook his head. “Whoa—here it comes! Nick, I’ve got warp power if you want it!”

  “Do I ever! Release the tractor beam. Shucorion, head us away from the Kauld system, best speed.”

  Bonifay pounded the console in satisfaction. “I didn’t think she’d recover! Are we running for Belle Terre?”

  “No, no,” Keller vowed. “I have not yet begun to spit and swear.”

  Through his clearing eyes he saw Savannah blinking at him. “We can’t fight it if we can’t get close enough to hurt it,” she said. “What’re you thinking to do?”

  “Time for plan B.”

  “Which is—?”

  “Lure it away. Zane, get down to the bay. Start pitching out cannisters of olivium with detonators on them. Blow them by remote and spray that stuff in a trail behind us. If that thing sniffs out the ore, then refined olivium ought to drive it crazy.”

  “I have a better idea. Let’s feed it out through the impulse drive exhaust.”

  “Won’t it overheat?”

  “Might make it more potent. I can also do that without leaving the bridge.”

  “How could you?”

  “Transporters. I’ll beam the olivium out of its containers and into the mix. Won’t even have to touch it.”

  “Maybe you are a wizard.”

  He had tried to sacrifice his ship, but she had been stunned. Now all he could do was use the olivium as a trail of breadcrumbs to attract the water balloon as far into uncharted interstellar void as he could go, as far as the ship’s power and fuel could hold out, to buy time for Belle Terre and Starfleet to bring more help, or for Captain Kirk to find his way back and continue the fight.

  That would be far, and it would be cold and empty. There would be no one to rescue them. No way to return.

  As they streaked into the void, the ship thrumming with effort and pulsing in her own discomforts and incompatibility, the crew settled down to an uneasy silence. Soon Zoa returned from the weapons ports. Her work was done there. She took her post, and did what they were all doing—waiting it out.

  “Bonifay, is it following us?” Keller quietly asked.

  “At warp six,” Bonifay said. “We’re barely keeping up speed.”

  “Do whatever it takes.”

  Bonifay simply nodded. His dark eyes were crimped, his black hair matted with sweat.

  Keller sank into his command chair, but really only got one leg all the way on before his energy sank away. He’d made the commitment that he had suspected all along would be forced upon them. The bundled photons had bought them a few seconds when they needed seconds, but no more. The thing was still chasing them.

  That was what he wanted. Now he had it.

  The blue autopilot light came on. He spotted it near Shucorion’s elbow. A moment later, Shucorion slid out of the helm chair and approached Keller.

  Casting a glance at Vellyngaith to make sure the Kauld battlelord wasn’t paying them any attention, Shucorion spoke softly, keeping the words between the two of them. “Your decision is sound. If you tried to conquer it, we might be killed and never know.”

  Keller simply nodded, taking what little refuge could be had in knowing he came to the same conclusion.

  Sympathetic, Shucorion paused a few moments, then made a new suggestion. “We should use the time we have to make repairs.”

  “No point,” Keller told him quietly. “Repairs won’t change how long the dilithium holds out. We’re going to fly until we die.”

  Shucorion nodded. “But at least,” he offered, “we will die working.”

  Somehow, the sentiment was actually sweet, charming. Despite its firing in a generations
-old kiln of strife, Shucorion’s wish carried tremendous bravery and determination. The Blood never curled up, even when they knew the end was coming. They would pick and pluck at the universe around them, leaving it a little tidier, a little neater, a little better.

  Keller had no words for this. He wanted to be wise and sage, to have the right thing to say, or at least a mellow note of approval for this Blood way that had worked so well for so long. Nothing would come out.

  His only offer was a mellow gesture of gratitude. He reached over and gave Shucorion a pat on the arm. Seemed inadequate.

  Shucorion looked puzzled. He didn’t understand what he’d done to garner that reaction. To him, work was what should be done. Breathe, eat, work.

  Keller smiled at the naivete and admired it.

  “Nick!” Bonifay suddenly flinched, stinging the whole bridge with his shout. “It’s increased speed! It’s trying to overtake us!”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Enterprise

  “FROM WHAT I’VE SEEN,” Kirk condensed, “these Multimillennials shouldn’t even need olivium. They don’t need it, do they, Captain Dogan?”

  “Nah,” Mitch Dogan sputtered around his pipe. “It’s a waste product. They stuck it on that moon to keep it from hurtin’ anybody. Never expected nobody to need a quaking volcanic mass in an uninhabited solar system, in the middle of Gamma Night. They didn’t really remember the idea of planet-hoppin’ till they saw us doing it. It was long gone in their past, y’might figure. They didn’t have no idea the olivium would be a gold mine for somebody. The plan is to take it all away and ditch it in the interdimensional and intergalactic void when they leave, where it can’t be no more problem.”

  Spock was so moved, so caught up in the implications as to actually take Kirk by the arm. “Jim, if the Quake Moon is removed from the Occult solar system, the results will be epic disaster. Not only will we lose ore of incalculable worth, but the sudden physical absence of so large a body would lay irreparable waste to Belle Terre.”

  “Yes, I know.” As if whispering could keep these people from knowing anything at all, Kirk motioned him to back off. “Give me a moment.”

  Dogan, though he seemed to be enjoying a good look around the sparkling bridge, was certainly paying attention. “They know olivium’s a leap for us. I mean you. Y’know what I mean. Tell you what, when I say ‘you’ I mean ‘you,’ and when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘them.’ ” Dogan hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the thing on the main screen. “Get it?”