The Rings Of Tautee

by Dean Wesley Smith

  The ship felt like a bucking horse. Kirk rode his chair for the first few major jolts and then it moved down when he was moving up.

  He lost his grip on the arms and soared through the air, as he had done as a boy on his second riding lesson.

  Time seemed to stop, yet the bridge was a blur of noise and darkness and sparks around him.

  He slammed into the navigation console, and felt a pain so deep that his body couldn’t encompass it all.

  Something was wrong.

  His mind wanted to leave.

  But it couldn’t.

  He’d fallen before and remained conscious.

  He reached for the console, in an attempt to stand up.

  Then everything went black.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  MCCOY WAS IN the cargo bay.

  The elderly man in front of him seemed to have suffered the Tauteean form of a heart attack. McCoy had somehow kept the man from dying, but he wasn’t sure how long that would continue. He was still clueless about Tauteean internal physiology. He had sent for one of the Tauteean doctors, and hoped she would know what to do.

  A young Tauteean woman named Dicnar was preparing the next patient, quizzing her about the various pains, seeing if the emergency could wait. She wasn’t as good as Nutri had been, but she was working out just fine.

  The noise and stench here was as overpowering as it had been everywhere else. Only here, the noise came from the moans of the injured, and the stench was that of damaged and rotting flesh.

  Some of these wounds had suppurated for over a week. McCoy shuddered to think of it.

  He had made the cargo bay an emergency facility. He hadn’t been able to work in the shuttle bay, where a large number of this new group had arrived. And there was no way he could make it to sickbay. The patients in here were seriously ill, and might not even survive until the next day.

  He had to tend to them first.

  Back to rule number one of emergency care.

  But he wasn’t thinking about his patients at the moment. He was worrying. The captain’s voice had just come over the intercom, telling everyone to hold on. Something had gone terribly wrong. They should have jumped to warp and been away from the subspace waves of destruction. But obviously they hadn’t.

  And except for his assistant, McCoy was the only mobile person in the entire bay. He couldn’t secure these people. There wasn’t even a place to secure himself.

  Earlier, security guards had tied off the barrels that Scotty kept down here, but McCoy wasn’t even certain those ties would hold. He needed a good old-fashioned forcefield, but since the lights had just flickered and dimmed down here, he doubted there was enough power for that, either.

  He glanced around. He needed something to hang on to.

  “The support beam, Dicnar,” he said, and hurried over the supine patients to the middle of the bay. Dicnar was right behind him. They clung to the support beam like prisoners tied to a sailing mast.

  Then the deck came alive under his feet.

  A huge rumbling shook everything, and the deck bucked like a blanket being flapped out over a bed.

  Up.

  Down.

  Up.

  Then down hard again.

  His patients flew like leaves in a violent windstorm. Dicnar was screaming, and McCoy watched in horror as the fragile, horribly ill Tauteeans slammed into each other, into walls, and onto the floor.

  He would lose them.

  He would lose them all.

  Then the floor bucked particularly hard, yanking him loose and tossing him into the air. He tried to regain his balance, but the effort was futile. He wrapped his arms around his head, brought his knees up to protect his chest, and watched the ground careen toward him.

  He landed on top of a Tauteean who had a severed leg. McCoy could feel the man’s bones breaking. Or maybe they were McCoy’s bones. He didn’t want to think about that.

  Two more hard, sharp shakes that sent him into the air again and then the deck became a solid place again under him.

  He waited for the next shock, but it didn’t come.

  Slowly, making sure he still had all his bones intact, he stood. He was going to be sore for days, but at least he was alive. He wagered that was a great deal more than he could say for some of his patients around him.

  The man he landed on had gone white with pain. His remaining leg was twisted and flattened.

  But he wasn’t the only one.

  What had once been neat rows of the desperately sick Tauteeans was now a jumble of flesh and bedding and clothes. He couldn’t tell in many places where one patient started and another left off.

  A few feet in front of him, Dicnar pulled herself to her feet and with a dazed look, glanced around.

  “Dicnar,” McCoy said over the slowly growing moaning sounds filling the room. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, turning to face him. She had hit her head. Above her right eye a large purple knot was welling up.

  “Stay right there,” he said. He quickly glanced around until he saw his medical tricorder near the pillar he had been originally holding. He grabbed the tricorder, and by stepping over a few unconscious Tauteeans, he was at Dicnar’s side.

  “You’ll live,” he said, shutting off his scanner after just a moment. “Although you may regret it when the headache hits. Think you can help me here?”

  She nodded, then put her hand to the side of her face. The movement must have hurt.

  McCoy had to take her mind off it, just as he had to take his mind off the throbbing in his knees.

  “Good.” McCoy glanced around. A few more of the Tauteeans were getting to their feet. They all glanced at him as if asking him what they should do. It was so overwhelming. He knew how bad this room looked, and this room was just one of many.

  Now, instead of all the old injuries, there were a series of new ones as well.

  And the lights were still dim.

  The ship was in trouble, too.

  The barrels had remained in place. The bodies had piled on the left side of the cargo bay, just beneath the barrels, leading McCoy to think that the ship had tilted somehow, had lost part of her internal stabilizer. The right side of the room was bare.

  “Dicnar,” he said, “let’s start up in the right corner and straighten this mess out. Let’s see what we have here.”

  Now.

  Now that things had gotten worse.

  He would be at this for days. Why didn’t Starfleet listen to him? Why weren’t there more medical personnel on starships? It wasn’t as if a trip into space was a walk in the park.

  “Dr. McCoy to the bridge,” the intercom said, barely audible as the moaning in the room grew. It sounded like Sulu’s voice, but he couldn’t tell.

  He glared at the faraway voice. He was needed here. Here, dammit.

  “Go,” Dicnar said. “I’ll start here.”

  Even she understood Starfleet protocol, even though she’d only been on the ship for a few minutes. The doctor had to treat the bridge staff first. If he didn’t, the ship’s most important personnel might die and leave them all stranded.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said.

  But she had already turned and bent over the survivor closest to the right corner.

  He headed for the bridge, stepping over moaning people as he went.

  This was impossible. If it was this bad here, no telling what the rest of the ship looked like.

  And who was injured or dying on the bridge. He didn’t want to think about those possibilities at all.

  The door from the cargo bay opened onto a scene of total destruction. Ceiling tiles had fallen all over and the hundreds of Tauteean survivors who had littered the halls had been tossed everywhere. Many were getting back to their feet and trying to help their friends, but others weren’t so lucky.

  He slowly worked his way up the hall, helping those he could help quickly. Whoever was hurt on the bridge was just going to have to wait a little lon
ger. This situation was impossible.

  Just impossible.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  THE FARRAGUT FELT like a refugee leaving the site of a thousand-year war. It wouldn’t have been so bad, Bogle thought, if it weren’t for that last group of survivors. Kirk had sent over more than Bogle expected, and there’d been no room for them in the lower decks.

  He had to put them on the bridge.

  He had forgotten how badly people smelled when they’d been locked up together in a small research station with no running water. He had surreptitiously ordered the air-filtration system on high, but it hadn’t helped much.

  No wonder Kirk had been concerned about his environmental systems. Even if an extra thousand people could have breathed the air, the systems wouldn’t have been able to handle the stench.

  Bogle gripped the arms of his command chair, alternately cursing Kirk and feeling half-relieved that he had helped the man. Not helping would have haunted Bogle’s sleep for years.

  The difference between him and Kirk was that Bogle followed the rules, even when they gave him nightmares.

  Kirk didn’t.

  But in this case, Kirk had an argument that Starfleet would probably buy. And Kirk had made the decision. Bogle hadn’t. But he would, in his private logs and in his off-the-record communications with the admirals, make it clear that he never wanted to work with James Kirk again.

  Their styles were too different.

  And the next time, Bogle might end up fighting Kirk instead of solving whatever problem was at hand.

  “Captain,” Richard Lee said, standing up from his scope. Bogle hated it when Lee used that tone. It meant something else had gone wrong. “The Enterprise didn’t jump to warp.”

  “What?” Bogle asked. He swiveled his chair and nearly hit an elderly Tauteean woman in the head. Of all the stupid things to do. Kirk should have known better. No one could surf that wave, not even that damn James T. Kirk.

  What was Kirk thinking?

  Bogle swiveled his chair so that his feet were nowhere near the woman’s head. She, for her part, moved closer to the railing, and looked at him with terror.

  “Are we far enough out to be safe for the moment?” Bogle asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Lee said. “At this distance it will take the wave almost a day to reach us. And its intensity will have decreased by almost fifty percent.”

  “All stop,” Bogle said. He got out of his chair, and stepped past three survivors. They gathered their legs up close, and watched him as if he were some lumbering giant—which, from their perspective, he probably was.

  He stopped beside Lee, who was again looking into his scope.

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “They’ve gone to full impulse power,” Lee said. “It seems they’re trying to outrun the wave.”

  “They can’t do that at impulse,” Bogle said. “Why didn’t they jump to warp?”

  “Maybe something broke down,” Lee said, glancing up at the captain. “It does happen, and usually at the worst times. And their ship took quite a beating doing that rescue operation.”

  Bogle nodded. That would seem more logical. Kirk might take risks that Bogle didn’t agree with, but he never seemed to take unreasonable risks.

  At least, not with people’s lives.

  With people’s careers, maybe, but not their lives.

  “How long do they have?” Bogle asked.

  “Ten seconds to impact,” Lee said.

  Ten seconds.

  Ten seconds wasn’t even long enough to make a decision, let alone figure out a way to assist them.

  Come on, Jim.

  He didn’t dare die now. Bogle didn’t think he could be nearly as convincing as Kirk in discussing the reasons behind all the Tauteean survivors aboard.

  Besides, if the Enterprise was destroyed, the fleet would lose one of its best ships.

  “Sir, they’re powering up photon torpedoes.”

  Bogle laughed in spite of the situation. “Kirk just won’t say die. He’s going to blast a hole in the wave.”

  Lee stood, but kept his face pressed to the scope. “They fired ten torpedoes at point-blank range!”

  “Well?” Bogle said, almost fearing the news. “Did they make it?”

  Lee didn’t respond. He shifted from foot to foot, staring into the screen.

  The rest of the bridge crew leaned forward.

  The survivors merely looked confused.

  Bogle resisted the urge to rub his hands together nervously.

  This last was one strain too many in an unbelievable day. The second time they had stood on the sidelines and watched the Enterprise in a scrape.

  Come on, Jim.

  Finally Lee straightened away from the scope. He was grinning.

  “The wave is past them,” he said. “They seem dead in space, but they are still in one piece.”

  “Yessss!” Bogle said, clenching a fist and shaking it. The rest of the crew grinned too. Bogle cleared his throat, tugged his shirt into place, and resumed his dignified-captain pose as if he hadn’t just acted like a schoolboy whose team had won the championship.

  “Hail the Enterprise, Gustavus.”

  “Aye, sir,” she said. She moved her hand across the communications board. “I’m getting no response.”

  “Two Klingon vessels are dropping out of warp near us, sir,” Rodriguez said.

  Bogle turned to Lee. “Can we get back to the Enterprise?”

  Lee shook his head. “No, sir, not for a few days at least. They’re inside that expanding sphere of the subspace wave. The same thing would happen to us if we tried to go back that just happened to them. We have to wait until the intensity of the wave has diminished by a factor of fifty at least.”

  “We’re being hailed by the Klingons,” Gustavus said.

  “On screen,” Bogle said. He turned, narrowly missing the feet of a Tauteean infant. The child squalled and crawled back toward its mother.

  Bogle barely managed to face the screen before KerDaq’s image appeared.

  “It seems your friend Kirk has gotten himself in trouble again,” KerDaq said.

  Bogle nodded. “It seems that way.”

  “Are you foolish enough to try to return?” KerDaq asked.

  “There is nothing we can do at the moment,” Bogle said. “We need to proceed to the starbase and unload these survivors.”

  “I agree,” KerDaq said. “Then we shall return to help Kirk.”

  “‘We’?” Bogle blurted out the word in spite of himself. He couldn’t really believe what he had just heard. But he was facing a Klingon who was temporarily his ally. He should have been more tactful.

  KerDaq snorted. “Kirk saved my life when the wave smashed my ship. Returning is the honorable thing to do.”

  It was, but Bogle hadn’t realized the Klingons would feel that way. There was so little that he really knew about them. “We’ll rendezvous after we drop off the survivors on Starbase Eleven,” Bogle said.

  “I shall leave you a time and place,” KerDaq said. His image winked off the screen.

  “I was supposed to say that,” Bogle muttered. But it didn’t matter. They had agreed. And if KerDaq understood the word “honor” the way Bogle did, they would set up a rendezvous and return for the Enterprise.

  “Mr. Rodriguez,” Bogle said. “Full speed to Starbase Eleven. Engage when ready.”

  Then Bogle returned to his chair and sank into it heavily. Lee stepped past a group of survivors to stand beside Bogle. “Well, Mister Lee,” Bogle said, “when Kirk’s involved, the universe is never a dull place.”

  Lee laughed. “I think that’s an understatement, Captain.”

  “You know, Mr. Lee,” Bogle said, smiling to himself, “I believe you’re right.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  PRESCOTT WAS TUCKED under the console, her knees against her chin and her arms trapped at her sides. She had braced herself as well as she could, but even that was not well enough. She was nau
seated and terrified and angry at herself for the first two emotions, and for causing this mess in the first place.

  The ship was rocking like a Tauteean Silksail in a hurricane. People were being tossed all over the ship. Lieutenant Uhura fell against Prescott’s console. Mister Sulu tumbled off his chair. Mister Chekov flew through the air like a ball thrown by a child.

  Only Mister Spock held his ground, as if by magic.

  The clang and clatter was terrifying, and beneath it was the rumble of the ship herself, as if she were screaming in protest.

  Even the moon’s breakup had not been this violent. They had said this would be worse, but she hadn’t imagined anything this bad. Apparently her imagination hadn’t been good enough.

  Then Captain James Kirk flew out of his chair. He looked graceful for a moment, tumbling feet over forehead, as if he had intended to fall all along. The illusion was shattered, though, when he slammed into Mister Chekov’s console. He brought a hand up, moaned, and collapsed.

  The shaking stopped.

  All except the shaking inside.

  Lieutenant Uhura stood first. She staggered as if she couldn’t quite get her balance, then made her way back to her chair. Mister Chekov moaned and grabbed his arm. Mister Spock helped one of the crewmen out from under a nearby console.

  No one, apparently, had noticed Captain James Kirk.

  Prescott crawled quickly on hands and knees under the rail and down to where Captain James Kirk lay sprawled beside the navigation console. He had a massive cut along the top of his head which seemed to be bleeding a river of dark red blood.

  Mister Chekov, still clutching his arm, hurried down the stairs beside her. He knelt near the console, let go of his arm, and pressed his hand against Captain James Kirk’s neck.

  “He’s alive,” Mister Chekov said. “But I don’t know for how long.”

  Mister Sulu punched a comm-link button while Prescott and Mister Chekov worked to stop the blood from flowing. “Dr. McCoy to the bridge,” Mister Sulu said.

  Behind her Prescott heard Spock say, “Mister Scott, I need a status report.” Obviously this crew was well trained. Even with their leader injured, they went on.