STAR TREK®: NEW EARTH - THIN AIR

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  What did the man mean the Conestogas had all been cannibalized? Did that mean there was no escaping if they needed to? If so, why was the governor even talking about using the ships again?

  She let the fresh air clear her mind.

  The last time Pardonnet had given the order to evacuate, her son Reynold had been missing. She was going to make sure that didn’t happen again this time. She and Reynold were going to stick together, no matter what happened.

  She reached the sidewalk up to her front door. Her garden seemed even more wilted than it had been before she left, even though she knew that wasn’t possible. But knowing there was possibly something in the soil that was killing her plants made it seem that way.

  She went inside and looked around. A quick check confirmed that Reynold was working on homework in his room. Everything was just so normal, so familiar.

  She went back into the living room and dropped onto her couch. How was she going to be able to give up the cozy room where she and Jim had spent many an evening during Gamma Nights sitting and just reading?

  She let herself think back over those evenings. He was comfortable to be with, and he had said the same about her. That fact seemed to have surprised them both. She still wasn’t ready to get into another relationship, especially with a famous starship captain, but they enjoyed each other’s company so much, it seemed as if they had just fallen into it.

  Now, if they had to leave, those evenings in this room would end. She didn’t like that thought at all.

  She stood, moved to the kitchen, and got herself a glass of water. This was her second home since reaching Belle Terre. The first had been on the main continent, and had been completely destroyed in the moon explosion. She was proud of this one, much more than the first prefab dome that had been her and Reynold’s first home. This one she had helped build with her own hands, out of wood from nearby forests. For some reason, that made it more hers.

  Giving it all up wasn’t going to be easy. In a whole lot of ways.

  And the school. She’d helped build that, too. What would happen to the equipment and supplies at the school? If the evacuation was rushed, they were going to have to leave a lot of supplies behind.

  But the machines, all the disks of knowledge, shouldn’t be left. She could get her and Reynold’s bags packed quickly; then the two of them, maybe with help from other kids and a few adults, might be able to get much of the equipment and supplies ready to move as well.

  She glanced at the time. Eight and a half hours until the end of Gamma Night. Not much time, but maybe enough to save what she considered the most important aspect of the colony. Knowledge.

  She finished off her glass of water and then headed for Reynold’s room. It was going to be a challenge to get ready in time, but maybe, if she could make it interesting enough for Reynold and the other children, she might get it done.

  At least worrying about getting the school materials ready to move would keep her from thinking too much about losing her home.

  And losing Belle Terre.

  Chapter Five

  TEGAN’S DINNER with Captain Skaerbaek just hadn’t happened. Thirty minutes after he had left her in the large suite, the captain had called her over the communication link in her room. It seemed a situation had come up and he would have to take a rain check on dinner. He hadn’t said anything more and she hadn’t pressed him.

  Her suite had its own small kitchen and at a quick glance she knew someone had stocked it with enough food to last for a week. She had then changed into comfortable clothes and gone back to the medical ward to sit by Charles.

  At seven, before he got sick, Charles had been a spirited boy, with a smile that could light up a room and enough energy to power a ship. Now all she wanted was to have that boy back, not the sickly one sleeping here now.

  Twenty minutes later, while sitting with her son, she learned from Dr. Akins what the captain’s situation was. It seemed that for some strange reason caused by the Kauld, it might be necessary, after the Gamma Night was over, to evacuate the entire planet. There was a chance that all of Belle Terre might become uninhabitable.

  Tegan pretended to be shocked, but all she really wanted to do was clap her hands and shout for joy. Belle Terre to her and Charles had become a prison. And a deadly poisonous place for Charles, with his allergy to olivium ore. If the entire colony was forced to leave, then Charles would get better.

  But one hour later, still sitting beside Charles’s bed, watching him breathe raggedly, she had decided she needed to continue with her plan to find her own way away from this system for her and Charles. Just in case Governor Pardonnet and his people were successful in finding a way to stay in this system. Charles didn’t have the time. A few days, if the shielding in this hospital ship didn’t work, might be too long for her son. And she wasn’t going to just sit there and watch her son die.

  She tucked the blanket around Charles and headed out of the main ward and down the hall toward her suite. But instead of going in, she just kept going. She knew her way around starships enough to know how they were laid out. And before coming to the Brother’s Keeper, she had looked up a floor plan of the large hospital ship and studied it.

  She had to admit, it was an impressive ship. If needed, the Brother’s Keeper could care for over one hundred critically sick or wounded and another five hundred in the wards. It carried a crew and medical staff of another hundred when fully staffed. There were six stations on the bridge and five in engineering, plus massive storage and cargo holds.

  But what interested her the most were the medical ship’s shuttles. There were two of them, both parked in a large shuttlebay. Both shuttles had been used to help save Belle Terre in the moon explosion, but she doubted they had been used much since.

  Both shuttles had enough power to get her and Charles away from the system if needed. And she thought she knew how to fly them, after being trained on small shuttlecraft back on Earth before joining this colony. Since her training she hadn’t had the need or opportunity to fly a shuttle, but she doubted she had forgotten the skill.

  Where she would take Charles she didn’t know. There was no way a small shuttle could even begin to make the long trip back to Federation space. But just anywhere outside the influence of the olivium was all Charles needed. How she would get a shuttle out of the medical ship and away without detection, she also didn’t yet know. At the moment she was just looking at options.

  And taking one of those shuttles was an option.

  With luck, Belle Terre would have to be abandoned and all the colonists would have to leave, taking her and Charles with them. That would serve the cold-hearted Governor Pardonnet just fine, as far as she was concerned.

  She didn’t meet anyone in the hallway to the shuttlebay, and the door to the bay slid open as she approached it, bringing the lights up inside automatically. Her heart leaped at the sight of the two shuttles, both turned and waiting to be taken out of the wide shuttlebay doors to space. The closest ship was called Little Brother and the other Little Sister.

  “Cute names,” she said out loud, her voice echoing in the large bay. She stepped forward toward Little Sister and the door closed behind her. She had always hoped to give Charles a little sister some day, when she found a new partner. Maybe this was a good sign.

  She walked around the shuttle, making sure not to touch anything, pretending to be just a visitor gawking at a small ship, in case anyone was watching on a security camera. But her walk-around was enough to let her know the shuttle was in good working order, cleaned and more than likely ready to fly. Typical Starfleet preparedness.

  “Beautiful,” she said out loud, again her voice echoing.

  With a smile at Little Sister, she headed out of the shuttlebay. Option one found. Now to see if she could prepare an option two. And that option concerned the captain.

  “Impossible, sir,” Scott said to Captain Kirk. “There is just no way those big ships will be ready, Capt’n. Not in ten days, let alone ten h
ours.”

  Kirk stared at his chief engineer. Scotty had spent the entire Gamma Night stuck on one of the Conestogas, climbing through everything, trying to fix what he and his crew could fix with limited parts. After a few hours inside the environmental controls, Scotty had said he knew it wasn’t going to be possible. So the moment the Gamma Night had ended, he had beamed back to the Enterprise to tell the captain in person. Now, as Captain Kirk and Spock faced him in the science lab, the cannisters of soil seemed to dominate the room behind them.

  Kirk was surprised, actually, at what Scotty was saying. It wasn’t often his chief engineer said something couldn’t be done. Period.

  “Why?” Kirk asked. “What changed?”

  “Them environmental systems, Capt’n,” Scotty said. “Everythin’s been completely torn out. It would take a complete rebuild and ya know that would take some time. I have my men checkin’ to see if all the big ships are the same, but I have a sneakin’ hunch they are.”

  “Sixty thousand colonists trapped on the surface,” Kirk said, shaking his head. “Scotty, we have no choice.”

  “I’m sorry, Capt’n,” Scotty said. “With a full crew, an’ three full days, we might be able ta rebuild one or two of the ships, but that would be the best we could do.”

  “That wouldn’t be enough,” Kirk said. Even with cramming people on two ships, the other Starfleet ships, and the Enterprise, there was no way sixty thousand people could be taken care of. It was an impossible situation.

  “There may be another option, Captain,” Spock said.

  “I’m listening,” Kirk said. At this point, he was willing to listen to any ideas at all. They had to find a way to save the colonists and buy some time to stop this siliconic gel.

  “Mr. Scott,” Spock said, “the main components of the environment systems from each of the big ships were removed and taken to the surface of the planet, correct?”

  “I dona know where else they’d have gone,” Scott said.

  “So, Captain,” Spock said, “we could use those same systems on the surface to protect the people there, instead of in the ships.”

  Kirk stared at his science officer, trying to understand what exactly Spock was saying. “How could that be done, Spock?”

  “Build protective coverings,” Spock said, “over the inhabited areas. They would only have to serve to hold the siliconic gel outside. And the environmental equipment on the surface could be used to produce breathable air inside each shelter.”

  “Pressurized domes?” Kirk asked. “Building them is going to be harder than putting the equipment back in the Conestogas.”

  “The shelters would not have to be pressurized in any fashion,” Spock said, “and would only have to carry their own weight, since the siliconic gel is just slightly heavier than the weight of air.”

  “What about the siliconic gel polymers on the ground inside the sheltered areas, in the soil?” Kirk asked.

  “We break it apart, slow it down, the same way you did in that cannister over there,” Spock said. “Plowing the ground would break enough of the polymers apart to slow the advancement for days. We should be able to come up with a simpler, safer way of doing the same thing.”

  Kirk nodded. From what he was beginning to understand about the siliconic gel, the biggest threat from it—after it was formed—was the fact that it shoved the oxygen away, causing anyone breathing the siliconic gel to suffocate. Siliconic gel itself was basically just silicon and nothing more.

  “Am I to understand then that any building closed against the normal elements would serve the same function for the short term?” Kirk asked.

  Spock nodded. “As long as the supply of oxygen lasted.”

  Kirk looked at Scotty and Spock, then nodded. “All right, we attack this from three fronts. Mr. Scott, keep working on those ships. I want as many of them ready to hold people as you can get, as fast as you can get them in shape. Do whatever it takes and keep me informed regularly.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Mr. Spock, you keep working on a way to stop the nanoassemblers.”

  “Understood,” Spock said.

  “I’m going to talk to the governor about finding shelter for everyone on the planet. He’s going to love this.”

  “Better than goin’ back to the ships,” Scotty said.

  “Maybe,” Kirk said. He wasn’t convinced, and he doubted Governor Pardonnet was going to be either.

  The arid, desert canyon cut across the landscape as if a huge knife had sliced open the face of the planet. The hot wind whipped at Pardonnet’s face as he moved to the edge, away from Captain Kirk and Mary, and looked down. The walls were brown rock and vertical, plunging at least two hundred feet down to a canyon floor. A stream ran through the valley from Pardonnet’s left to right, and there were trees and brush along the water’s edge, forming a green strip down the center.

  The siliconic gel clearly hadn’t advanced far yet in the canyon floor, because the plants still seemed very green. Or maybe it was only in comparison with the dry, plantless desert around him that they looked alive.

  The opposite canyon rim was a good two hundred meters across, and the canyon seemed to run straight for kilometers in both directions, as if someone had actually measured it and built it. A dozen of his engineers were working the other side of the canyon, taking readings, preparing for what was to come.

  “Well, Captain,” Pardonnet said, “think we can cover most of this?”

  Kirk nodded, turning his back on the wind to face Pardonnet. “Possible. This is a better situation than I had hoped you’d find.”

  “Actually,” Pardonnet said, glancing back at the canyon, “I didn’t know this was even here. Mary told me about it after she heard your idea about staying on the surface.”

  “Made a day trip here last month,” Mary said. “Thought it was interesting.”

  “It is,” Kirk said, smiling at her.

  “My engineers think we can have it covered quickly,” Pardonnet said. “Two or three days to cover a full kilometer of canyon. And we’ll keep adding more each day. It should fit the entire colony population easily in a week or so.”

  “How about securing it against storms?”

  Pardonnet smiled. He liked being ahead of Kirk once in a while, especially on important things like this. “Already thought about that, Captain. My people say that won’t be a problem. We’ll even build a temporary dam and water diversion system upstream in case of a sudden flood.”

  “Good thinking,” Kirk said. “Evacuate all your personnel from the danger areas first, get them here working. But keep your scientists trying to find a solution to the siliconic gel.”

  Pardonnet laughed. “Don’t worry, Captain. I’m shoving them every hour on the hour.” And he had been. The Starfleet scientists were good, but he also trusted his people more. If there was a solution to be found, and he knew there was, his scientists would find it.

  Kirk nodded and leaned over the edge, looking down. “How about digging rooms into the sides of the cliff faces?” He glanced back at Pardonnet. “That going to be possible?”

  Pardonnet moved up beside the captain, staring at the almost smooth walls of the canyon on the opposite side. Again he was ahead of Kirk. “More than possible, Captain. In fact, the rock structure allows easy digging and needs very little support blocking. All private living areas will be in the walls, all public buildings will be along the valley floor.”

  “You’re going to need to plow up that soil,” Kirk said, pointing at the trees and brush.

  “Even better,” Pardonnet said. “The soil along the bottom is only a thin layer. We’re going to move it all out, scrape the entire area under the covering down to rock before we start, to make sure we’re safe. Assuming the nanoassemblers don’t use rock as I have been told they don’t.”

  “They don’t,” Kirk said. “And without the soil the entire place will be cleaner as well.”

  “Exactly,” Pardonnet said. “We’ll drill for wate
r and everyone will go on food rations.”

  “How long can you last here?”

  Pardonnet glanced at Mary. He’d had her roughly figure out the answer to that very question the hour before. He indicated she should give the answer to Kirk.

  “We should have enough supplies to make it at least three months if needed,” Mary said.

  “Let’s hope it’s not needed,” Kirk said, clearly not happy with the answer. “But that at least buys us all some time. We’ll find a solution. If the Kauld can build it, we can tear it apart.”

  “The problem is,” Pardonnet said, “it doesn’t buy the planet much time. Right?”

  Kirk nodded again, but said nothing.

  Pardonnet knew that if they didn’t find a solution in a matter of a week or two at the outside, staying on Belle Terre was going to be a moot point. There wouldn’t be an animal, insect, or tree left alive on the planet. And in that case, Belle Terre certainly wouldn’t be a place to have a colony.

  Pardonnet stared at the rock canyon below him. Living in caves in a covered canyon was a long way from what he had envisioned his colony to be when he left Earth. But they were going to do what they had to do to survive. And if it meant living in caves, then all of them would live in caves.

  Chapter Six

  TEGAN WELCH sat beside Charles’s bed, holding his hand, watching the other patients’ family members come and go from the ward. None of the five sick patients seemed to be getting any better. Charles had had a rough night’s sleep and Dr. Akins decided it was better for all of them to stay mostly sedated. He swore to Tegan that twenty-four hours was far too soon to tell if there was going to be any improvement.

  She didn’t believe him for a moment.

  Since the decision to start evacuating the dangerous areas on the planet, all the other patients’ families had moved to the hospital ship as well. And all the Starfleet personnel had returned to stay. But even then, the ship still seemed abandoned. On a ship designed to hold hundreds and hundreds, forty to fifty people just didn’t seem like many. And except in the medical ward, with the patients, Tegan didn’t usually see any of the ship’s crew, even when she was out exploring.