The Rings Of Tautee

by Dean Wesley Smith

  “I don’t know,” he said, suddenly interested.

  “Brug,” another voice said through his intercom. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Try me,” Brug said, squinting through the crack at the growing gray creature.

  “I think a ship is heading toward this asteroid.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” Brug said. “We don’t have gray ships.”

  “I know.”

  Docr looked at him. He glanced at her. Her eyes were wide. “That’s impossible.”

  He nodded. “Mass hallucination. It was only a matter of time.”

  “True enough,” she said, “but none of us have gone crazy yet. Control,” she said to Operations, “do you have stats on that thing?”

  “It’s big,” Control said. Brug couldn’t identify the voice. “And it seems to be moving at an impossible speed. I think that—”

  Control’s voice stopped. It didn’t get cut off, it didn’t fade. It just stopped.

  “Control?” Docr said. “Control? Someone? Pick up?”

  There was no static on the line. The line was still open. Brug turned his dial, tried to bring in Mess, then Living. Nothing. Open lines but no voices.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Docr said. Then she looked up. The gray creature was over their dome, larger than the asteroid, longer than anything Brug had ever seen before.

  Brug heard a faint buzzing. He turned to see Docr fade into bits of light. He faded as well, only to reappear in a room filled with tall monsters.

  “I can’t believe things could get worse,” he said to himself, and fainted.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  THIS TIME, the noise was deafening. Voices talking, crying, and laughing. Some yelling in recognition. McCoy fought the urge to put his hands over his ears as he moved through the corridors.

  Or over his nose. The smell was overwhelming. Nearly a thousand refugees, most of whom had not bathed since the disaster began, were shoved like cattle into the hallways, dining areas, and cargo bays of the Enterprise.

  All the living quarters were filled, all the lounge areas, and all the maintenance closets.

  McCoy got the sense of hundreds of frail filthy people with little more strength than it took to moan at him each time he touched one of them.

  They were all bruised, all exhausted, and all terrified. A few seemed to think they had died and gone to the Tautee version of hell. McCoy couldn’t say as he blamed them. He was beginning to wonder the same thing himself.

  He had started out in sickbay, but emergency after emergency brought him deeper into the ship. He was lucky he’d been trained in field medicine or he would have been as overwhelmed as his nose and ears.

  First rule of field medicine: Treat the most seriously injured.

  Second rule: Don’t attempt miracles.

  Third rule: Attempt miracles.

  And so on.

  Mostly he had been working with crushed bones and collapsed lungs. These Tauteeans were so fragile, and so many of them had survived on very little oxygen. If he had had an entire field team, he would have been able to keep all the survivors alive. Now he would be lucky if he only lost a few.

  McCoy found himself in the shuttle bay. The trip there had been a succession of pink and bluish blood, broken femurs and tibias, and shattered ball-and-socket joints. He only knew he was in the shuttle bay because of the shuttles parked on their spots, doors open to reveal even more Tauteeans inside.

  The Tauteean he was working on was lying on one of Scotty’s cabinets. It had once been spotless. Now it was covered with dirt and smudges from a hundred filthy fingers.

  The Tauteean was male, young as Tauteeans went, and in a lot of pain. A gash ran across his forehead, just over his eyebrows, and when McCoy first bent over him, he had seen a bit of grayish brain matter.

  A quick medical scan showed the gash to be superficial and the brain uninjured, and the man’s vital signs were strong.

  Rule Four: Save the minor wounds for later.

  “He’ll live,” McCoy said to the Tauteean assistant named Nutri whom he had drafted to assist him. Nutri seemed to have some medical knowledge and had dug right in and helped. Nurse Chapel had also taken an assistant and was also checking patients. Anyone on the Enterprise with even a slight bit of medical knowledge had been drafted to do the same.

  At least two Tauteean doctors were among the survivors. McCoy had given them a minute lesson on how to read a medical tricorder, how to close a skin wound, and how to mend a broken bone. Then he sent them deep into the bowels of the ship. He expected they’d make a number of mistakes, but it was better than nothing for most of these people.

  McCoy stepped over a Tauteean with a black-and-blue eye who claimed nothing else was wrong, and bent over the next patient. This one was a young girl, who was half the size of Prescott. A child then. She was unconscious. McCoy scanned her and found that one leg had been crushed. Finesse surgery, which he just didn’t have time for at the moment. He could do the major repairs now and save the minor ones for later. If he had had more time, he would have done it all at once. Instead he would have to go back in, cause her extra pain, in order to save her leg and her life.

  He would be working on these people until he died.

  Eighty years from now.

  To make matters worse, the ship shook every five minutes. He kept losing track of the time, and so it seemed that each time he was about to do something delicate, the ship hit one of those waves.

  For a while survivors poured in. As he mended that bone, and inflated this lung, he heard stories that made him marvel at the ingenuity of the Tautee people.

  And made his hair curl.

  He had survived some terrifying things in his day, but nothing like what these people had gone through.

  Over five hundred Tauteeans on the fifth planet—the original source of the Tautee people—had gone below ground into ancient bunkers built for some war fought and won centuries before. They survived on dried food stored for people long dead, and were attempting to repair the air-circulation systems when the Enterprise found them. A few of those survivors had lost family to botulism and other diseases McCoy had thought completely eradicated.

  Fifty Tauteeans on a moon of the ninth planet, near the source of the destruction, saw the readings on their computers, guessed something awful was going to happen, and took a spaceship away from the planet. They accidentally surfed the first wave, and managed to float, helpless, in space until the Enterprise spotted them. Many of the collapsed-lung cases came from there. McCoy also suspected he had one case of reversible brain damage from that ship.

  Another hundred had holed up in a sealed laboratory on the moon of the third planet. They continued with their daily business as if nothing were wrong, and were, in McCoy’s opinion, his toughest patients. They didn’t want to believe he existed, didn’t want his help, and wanted to return to their work. He had never seen so many cases of mass denial in his entire life.

  Now the problem was where to put all the people. The cargo bays were full, the shuttle bays, including the shuttles, were jammed.

  McCoy had sent the less injured, the ones who didn’t need to lie down, out into the corridors to sit along the walls. But even the corridors were filling up.

  “Dr. McCoy?” Captain Kirk’s voice barely broke through the noise of the crowded shuttle bay.

  McCoy glanced at the girl with the crushed leg. She would have to wait a moment. He moved toward the comm unit on the bulkhead, indicating that his assistant should stay beside the girl.

  “Go ahead,” McCoy said, tapping the intercom line open.

  “Bones,” Kirk said. “We are beaming another two hundred aboard.”

  “Damned if I know where we’re going to put them,” Bones said. And he didn’t. There just didn’t seem to be much room left.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Kirk said. “Put them in the crew’s quarters. My cabin will hold a dozen or so.”


  “Your cabin’s full.”

  “It is?” Kirk seemed shocked. “Well, just find room. We’re running out of time. Kirk out.”

  “Find room, find room, as if I’m in charge of housekeeping. What does he think I’m doing down here? Napping?” McCoy gingerly made his way back to the injured girl. His assistant was running a tricorder over her.

  “She’s oxygen-starved,” Nutri said. “I think that’s why she’s unconscious.”

  The ship suddenly began to shake and rock, and the moans and panicked voices filling the shuttle bay increased. McCoy leaned against the bulkhead for support, and closed his eyes, not wanting to see more bones get broken, more Tauteeans get injured.

  Even after an hour of these shakes, every one scared him. Every time he could imagine the Enterprise being tossed against a huge asteroid.

  He had a vivid imagination at times. Too vivid.

  When the shaking finally passed, he leaned over the girl. Nutri shook her head. “I don’t think she’s going to make it,” Nutri said.

  McCoy did a quick scan. The girl’s signs were weak, but she was in no danger. And she had been without oxygen for a while, but not long enough to do any damage. She was unconscious because of the pain. And a good thing too. He wouldn’t want to stay awake with that kind of injury.

  McCoy made a rough splint to keep the leg straight, made certain it was clean and no bones had pierced the skin. Then he glanced at his assistant. “Find two people to carry this girl into the cargo bay. I’ll fix her leg there later.”

  Nutri nodded and dashed off over the sprawling figures of her injured people. McCoy watched her go. He didn’t know if he’d get to the girl later. He didn’t know if there would be a later.

  For any of them.

  But he had trusted Jim Kirk before.

  He had to trust him again.

  Then, suddenly, his fears got worse as the lights flickered, dimmed, and then went out.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  AT LEAST the bridge wasn’t crowded. Scotty had asked permission to beam survivors onto the bridge and Kirk had denied him. They needed open spaces here, and the ability to think without explaining each action.

  Or who they were.

  Or how they came to be here.

  Talking to Prescott was enough.

  The bridge was a place of action.

  It had to remain so.

  Besides, Kirk needed the space to pace. He stopped beside the science station. He didn’t know how Spock could remain so calm.

  And motionless.

  “How much time do we have before we need to close that hole?” Kirk asked.

  “Twenty-six minutes, Captain.” Spock didn’t even glance into his scope. Instead he kept scanning surrounding space for more survivors.

  Kirk nodded and sat down in his chair. Its ruined pad felt almost welcome. He tapped his comm button. “Mister Scott. Are the last survivors out of that mine?”

  They had been pulling two hundred more Tauteean survivors from a deep mine on an asteroid in the remains of the sixth planet. From Mister Spock’s last count, they had rescued nine hundred and sixty Tauteeans. They had no idea how many the two Klingon ships or the Farragut had found.

  “Aye, sir. We’ve got the last few and are awaiting coordinates for more,” Scotty said. “Although I don’t know where we’ll put ‘em.”

  More survivors. There wouldn’t be any more. Even though he wanted there to be. He shook his head, marveling at the choices before him. A thousand was simply not enough.

  A small difference …

  “… is better than no difference at all,” he muttered.

  “Captain?” Uhura asked. She had turned, hand to her ear, as if she had heard him in the intercom.

  He shook his head again. “Just muttering, Lieutenant.”

  He punched the intercom button again to the transporter room. “Good work, Mister Scott. Stand by.”

  “Aye, sir,” Scotty said.

  Kirk was running out of the time or the luxury to worry about all the Tauteeans he couldn’t rescue. All he could do now, when he had quiet time—if he ever had quiet time again—was hope that Spock’s estimates were wrong, that they had found every last survivor.

  That was a possibility, wasn’t it?

  But he knew better than to ask.

  “Captain,” Spock said, glancing up from his scope. “I have found a large group of survivors in a deep, underground mining area on the fourth planet.”

  “How large?” Kirk wasn’t really sure he wanted to know the answer.

  “I would estimate there to be over eight hundred, sir.”

  “Eight hundred. We can’t—”

  Suddenly the lights flickered and then went out. In the half second of total darkness, Kirk stood. This was too much. Then the emergency lights came on-line. The display screens and the instrumentation panels provided most of the light. The crew looked ghostly, but they had all retained their positions.

  “We have had a full power loss, Captain,” Spock said. “All of the sensors are down.”

  “Communications are out,” Uhura said.

  “The helm is not responding,” Sulu said.

  Kirk glanced around, not really believing what was happening. Suddenly they were completely dead and blind in the middle of the most dangerous debris field this side of Earth. Quickly he slammed his fist onto the comm button. “Scotty! What’s going on?”

  There was a moment of silence; then a quavering voice said, “Mister Scott is in the transporter room.”

  Kirk knew that. He had hit engineering by force of habit. He hit the comm button for the transporter room. “Mister Scott! Status!”

  This time, Scotty’s voice responded immediately. “Well, Captain, from what I can tell here, all this shaking and rattling around caused a short somewhere in the main circuits. The short caused a power spike large enough to knock out the main power couplings. Most of the systems are off-line.”

  “We noticed,” Kirk said. “We can’t run like this, Scotty. We need power. Now.”

  “I know, sir. I’ll do what I can. But at the moment, I canna get you more power.”

  Kirk leaned toward the arm of his seat. “How long will it take to get the power back on-line?”

  “I’m heading for engineering now,” Scotty said. “It shouldn’t be very long.”

  “How long, Mister Scott?”

  “Ach, five minutes, maybe six,” Scotty said.

  “Captain,” Spock said, without turning around, “the next subspace wave will hit us in exactly two minutes and eight seconds.”

  “Mister Scott, you have two minutes.”

  “Aye, sir,” Scotty said.

  Kirk hoped two minutes was enough time. Because if it wasn’t, the Enterprise and the thousand Tauteean survivors on board would be smashed to a pulp against the nearest asteroid.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “CAPTAIN,” Science Officer Lee said, glancing up from his scope. His voice seemed to shake and his face looked pale in the blue light from his panel. “The Enterprise is in trouble.”

  “What?” Bogle jumped up from his command chair. He’d spent most of the last hour there in silence, riding out the bumps of the subspace waves, and thinking, letting his crew handle the few rescue operations. Kirk’s last communiqué before the Enterprise went into the rings on a rescue operation had been addressed to both him and Admiral Hoffman at Starfleet. Kirk had reasoned that without the Federation and Klingons closing the rift, the Tauteean race might have a chance of survival. A small chance, but chance nonetheless. Therefore, since the Federation was causing the final destruction of the Tauteean system to save itself, a rescue operation was justified. The Prime Directive no longer applied.

  Kirk had a good argument, but it was nothing more than that. Hoffman might buy it. She wasn’t here. She hadn’t seen the rings, or the destruction. She didn’t know just how devastating it was.

  But Bogle did. And he wasn’t convinced. The Tauteeans would have
died if the Federation didn’t exist. They would have died if no one had come into their sector. They would die five days sooner because of Federation interference, but no race could save itself in only five days.

  Not in circumstances like these.

  Not with this kind of rift, in these kind of waves, with the Tauteeans’ level of technology.

  Jim Kirk knew that, and Kelly Bogle knew that.

  Bogle respected Kirk enough not to argue the point at this time. But that was it. If he was called to testify, he knew what he would say.

  “Sir?” Lee said.

  Bogle stood and moved over to the science station. “Can you tell what’s happening?” Bogle asked.

  “They seem to have suddenly lost all power and engines.”

  Behind him Bogle heard a few gasps from his bridge crew. Without power or engines, the Enterprise would not survive in those waves. Damn Kirk.

  Bogle turned to Gustavus. “Hail them.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Farragut to Enterprise. Come in, Enterprise.”

  Bogle waited in silence.

  “Farragut to Enterprise. Come in, Enterprise.”

  Nothing. Bogle rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, an old nervous habit he thought he’d lost.

  “Farragut to Enterprise. Come in, Enterprise.”

  Kirk had caused this. Kirk had gone in with no regard for Federation dictates, and now Kirk and his ship had become Bogle’s responsibility.

  “They may have lost communication in the power outage,” Lee said. “It appears to be a shipwide failure. If that is the case, they probably also have lost sensors.”

  Bogle glanced at the front screen, which showed the huge debris fields slowly forming rings around the Tauteean sun. A ship stranded in there, without power, had no chance of survival.

  Bogle didn’t want to know the answer to the next question, but he had to ask it. “How long until the next subspace wave hits them?”

  Lee studied his scope for a moment, his fingers dancing on his control board. Finally he said, “Less than two minutes, sir.”

  Bogle stood frozen for a moment. Not enough time to get there and help. Not enough time at all.