STAR TREK®: NEW EARTH - THIN AIR

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Less than a second after it was hit, the Kauld ship exploded.

  “Keep firing!” Kirk ordered as the other Kauld warships instantly broke to join the fight.

  Because of the spread-out formation of the six warships, the most logical target for all three Federation ships was the same, closest warship. Again it was overkill as the warship’s screens went down almost instantly under the massive assault and the Kauld vessel was cut in half by the concentrated fire.

  Suddenly it was four Kauld against three Federation. And the Kauld captain now in charge must have been in a past fight against the Enterprise.

  “They’re pulling back,” Sulu said.

  “Hold our position,” Kirk said, watching as the four warships sped away. “Track them. I want to know where they go.”

  “The privateers have taken up their original positions beside us,” Uhura said.

  “Open an audio channel to them,” Kirk said.

  “Open,” Uhura said.

  “Well done,” Kirk said. “Maintain this position.”

  “Thanks, but that was too easy,” Captain Kilvennan of the Hunter’s Moon said.

  “Oh, they’re coming back,” Captain Gillespie replied. “You can bet on that.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Kirk said. “And when they do, we’ll be ready for them. Kirk out.”

  He sat and stared at the screen, forcing himself to wait until Sulu said, “The Kauld warships have stopped outside of communication and scanning range, directly between us and their homeworld. They are holding positions there.”

  “Waiting for help,” Kirk said. “As expected. Put me through to Mr. Spock. Let’s hope his part of this operation went as well.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  YANORADA BREATHED a giant sigh of relief as the three screens in front of his chair finally filled with the images of stars again. He stared at the images for a moment, then turned to his first assistant. “Relaagith, are the long-range scanners ready and trained on the planet?”

  “They are calibrating, sir,” Relaagith said. “Less than one minute.”

  “Good,” Yanorada said. He’d been waiting for almost thirty hours for new information about what was happening on Belle Terre. He could wait another minute.

  “Sir,” Ayaricon said, “the humans are sending ships this way, I think.”

  “What do you mean you think?” Yanorada shouted.

  “They are moving very fast and are passing our location now, stopping in front of our warships. The big human warship and two others.”

  “Any indication our location has been discovered?” Yanorada asked.

  “No, I do not think so, sir,” Ayaricon said.

  Yanorada shook his head. “I knew those fools in the ships would cause problems.”

  “They have caused you more than problems,” a human voice said behind Yanorada.

  Suddenly human hands yanked him from his chair and smashed him into the ground, knocking the wind from his chest. The pain filled his every sense.

  After a few moments, he managed to push the pain back a little and open his eyes. Both Ayaricon and Relaagith were on the floor beside him. Humans had all three of them pressed to the ground with weapons held on the back of their heads. Relaagith was bleeding from his mouth and Ayaricon looked like he was about to break down and cry.

  Behind them a pointed-ear near-human watched the screen. Yanorada could see what was happening. The human ships and the Kauld warships were fighting. Suddenly a Kauld ship exploded. Then a moment later another warship did the same.

  Then the other four warships fled. Yanorada could not have been more disgusted.

  The pointed-eared one moved to the control panel and studied it for a moment, then started working on it as if he’d worked on these computers his entire life.

  “What are you doing?” Yanorada demanded.

  The human with the gun against the back of his head jammed it into his skin, shoving his cheek into the floor. The pointed-eared one didn’t respond.

  A moment later another human materialized just a few feet from where Yanorada lay. “What have you found, Spock?”

  “The information we seek is in these computers,” Spock said. “It will take a number of hours to remove it.”

  “Get started,” the new arrival said.

  Suddenly Yanorada felt himself yanked to his feet and turned to face the new arrival. The pain where he had been banged against the floor made sweat break out over his entire body, but he managed to contain it.

  “My name is Captain Kirk. Are you in charge of this cozy, little facility?” the human asked, moving up to get in Yanorada’s face.

  “What do you think, human?” Yanorada said.

  “His name is Yanorada,” the pointed-eared one said, reading from the screen. “He is the head of the Kauld version of a science department. Also very high in their government.”

  Yanorada was impressed the pointed-eared one could gather that much information that quickly.

  “Well, well,” Kirk said, moving up and even closer to Yanorada’s face. “Maybe even the inventor of the siliconic gel.”

  Yanorada kept his face as calm as he could with a disgusting alien so close.

  Kirk stayed there for a long number of seconds, then laughed and turned away, moving over to his pointed-eared friend. Kirk put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and then said, “Will it be as easy as you thought to pull up the code to shut their nanoassemblers down?”

  The pointed-eared one glanced at Kirk, then back at the screen. “That information will be available.”

  “Great!” Kirk said, turning back and smiling at Yanorada. “It’s going to be interesting to see how siliconic gel does on the Kauld homeworld. I wonder if your people will have as much luck stopping it as we are having.”

  From the floor Relaagith shouted, “You can’t do that!”

  The human guard holding him down jabbed him with the weapon.

  “You are not capable of doing such a thing, of course,” Yanorada said. He didn’t want to think about siliconic gel smothering his own people. Just humans.

  “Actually,” Kirk said, “it’s already been done. After we discovered what was going on, and that a seven-sound code was needed to shut down the nanoassemblers, it was agreed that you Kauld have just become too much of a problem to us. So using your own weapon on your own homeworld seemed like a perfect solution to rid us of you. Our missile filled with your very own nanoassemblers reached your homeworld during the last Gamma Night.”

  Yanorada’s legs had almost gone out from under him when Kirk mentioned the seven-sound code. It shouldn’t even be possible for them to know about it. Yet they did. Clearly. And they had attacked his planet as well.

  How could this be happening?

  “So,” Kirk said, moving up into Yanorada’s face again. “We came here to get the seven-sound code to shut down the nanoassemblers you planted on Belle Terre.”

  “There are a billion souls on my planet,” Yanorada said. “You will kill them all.”

  “You didn’t think much about killing sixty thousand of my people,” Kirk said, the anger clear in his voice. “Why should I care about yours? This is war and you seem to think that anything is fair in a war, including wiping out an entire colony. So why wouldn’t I put your own weapon against your planet? It seemed like the logical thing to do at the time.”

  Yanorada said nothing. There was nothing he could say. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. To his people.

  “I figured you’d like the idea more than that,” Kirk said, disgusted. “Take this scum and put him in a room all to himself. Put the others in separate rooms as well. And I want two men watching each of them at all times. Kill them if they try to escape.”

  “Yes, Captain,” the guard holding Yanorada said, yanking him around and down the hallway toward the small living quarters.

  Behind him Yanorada could hear his two assistants whimpering as they too were taken.

  As Gamma Night
lifted, Captain Skaerbaek was sitting in his command chair. He was stunned to see the Enterprise and two privateers jump to warp and then quickly drop back out near the Kauld warships.

  “Yellow alert! Get ready to move,” he ordered. “Plot a course to that location and stand by. I want to be ready if they need help out there.”

  The Brother’s Keeper was a medical ship, but it was also still a Starfleet ship. It had good screens and decent weapons. It could give as good as it took in many cases. Skaerbaek had only once had to use the offensive weapons before, but he wasn’t afraid to do it again if he had to.

  “Course laid in, Captain,” Lieutenant Redmond said. “Standing by.”

  A few moments later the three Starfleet ships blew one of the Kauld warships out of space. Then a moment later a second. The remaining ones turned and fled like scared children.

  Skaerbaek laughed. “Stand down alert and prepare to break orbit. I should have known Kirk wasn’t going to need help.”

  “Course?” Redmond asked. The red-haired young lieutenant glanced around, waiting.

  Skaerbaek stared at the screen. “Take us at a ninety-degree angle from Belle Terre in relationship to the Enterprise’s position. I don’t want to be too close to what Kirk’s doing, but at the same time we don’t want to be on the other side of the system if something happens.”

  “Copy that,” Redmond said. “Course laid in and standing by.”

  Skaerbaek turned to his communications officer, Lieutenant Jeffries, a young, bright-eyed woman right out of the Academy before this assignment. “I think with all the fighting going on, I better inform Captain Kirk what we’re doing. Put me through to the Enterprise.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. After a moment she nodded. “Sir, Captain Kirk is on the asteroid. He will be available shortly.”

  “On hold again,” Skaerbaek said, shaking his head and laughing. “The oldest problem of a communications society.”

  “Sir?” Jeffries asked.

  “Put him on the main screen when he is available, Lieutenant,” Skaerbaek said, chuckling to himself. With all the younger officers around him, he was often laughing at his own jokes.

  “Yes, sir,” Jeffries said, clearly puzzled.

  Skaerbaek sat back in his command chair and thought about his dinner last night with Tegan Welch. It had certainly been enjoyable, right up to the point where she made him realize Dr. Akins wasn’t doing his complete duty. Dr. Akins’s report had been filed on time, but Skaerbaek was going to wait for a few hours to read it. Let the doctor stew.

  Plus, if the patients recovered quickly after being taken out of range of the olivium, it was going to be very difficult for Dr. Akins to explain any of his actions, no matter how well written his report was.

  “Captain Skaerbaek?” Captain Kirk said just after his image appeared on the screen. Kirk was standing in a very odd room, clearly Kauld. In the background a bank of computers were glowing, and Spock was working at a panel. So the Kauld had an observation station inside an asteroid. No wonder Kirk attacked the way he did.

  “I wanted to inform you, Captain Kirk,” Skaerbaek said, “that I’m taking the Brother’s Keeper out of the system about a quarter of a light-year. We will monitor your situation and be standing by to help at any time, or respond to a medical emergency.”

  Kirk nodded. “Thank you for the information. I assume this is patient-related. The five who have allergic reactions to olivium.”

  Skaerbaek was impressed that Kirk knew what was happening on his ship. Of course, Skaerbaek had been impressed with Kirk since they started this mission together. “Actually, Captain,” Skaerbaek said, “one died, which is why we’re taking this action at this point.”

  Kirk frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. Keep me informed and monitor our movements and the Kauld. Any Kauld warship heads your way, you get out of there.”

  “Won’t even hesitate, Captain,” Skaerbaek said.

  “Good luck. Kirk out.”

  “All right, helm,” Skaerbaek said to Lieutenant Redmond, “let’s do it. Only a little slower if you will than the Enterprise. I don’t want to give the patients whiplash.”

  Lieutenant Redmond actually laughed. Maybe there was hope for the kid yet. “Engaging one-quarter impulse.”

  “Perfect,” Skaerbaek said. “Just perfect.”

  Kirk clicked off the communication link with Captain Skaerbaek and turned around. Spock was at one of the Kauld computer stations, his fingers rapidly working over the keys as if they had always used the alien configuration. Kirk was constantly amazed at how Spock could adapt so quickly. Of course, when asked, Spock would say he was slowed down by a certain percentage because of the unfamiliar nature of the computers, but slowed down or not, it always surprised Kirk that Spock could even do as much as quickly as he did.

  “Any success?”

  “It will take some time,” Spock said. Then he looked up at Kirk. “I assume you were playing what you call a bluff when you said you had already attacked the Kauld homeworld?”

  “Of course,” Kirk said. “Good to see you understanding the use of a bluff.”

  “In this case, I do not, Captain,” Spock said.

  “Leverage, Spock,” Kirk said, patting his first officer on the shoulder. “You bluff sometimes for leverage. Watch.”

  Kirk turned to the closest security officer. “Bring me the two young Kauld scientists. And don’t be gentle about it.”

  He didn’t like being rough on the prisoners, but at the same time, it was going to be the only way to save thousands of lives on Belle Terre.

  A moment later the guard shoved the Kauld into the room, making the clearly frightened younger scientist stumble and catch himself on the back of a chair.

  “What’s your name?” Kirk demanded of the tallest.

  “Relaagith,” the Kauld said.

  “And yours?” Kirk asked, staring at the second.

  “Ayaricon,” the young one whispered.

  “Speak up!” Kirk shouted.

  “Ayaricon!”

  “Well, Ayaricon, Relaagith,” Kirk said, moving up very close and smiling in a very nasty fashion at the tall one, “my first officer over there is having some trouble with my idea of infecting your planet with the nanoassemblers.”

  Relaagith glanced at Spock, then looked back. Ayaricon just stood, head down, trembling. Kirk could tell the kid was scared. And that was exactly how he needed to be at this point.

  “I’ve made him a deal,” Kirk said. “If either of you help him retrieve the seven-sound code for deactivating the nanoassemblers on Belle Terre, I will give you the seven-sound code to stop the ones we used against your homeworld. What do you say, Relaagith? Ayaricon?”

  Ayaricon looked over at Relaagith, who was looking shocked.

  “Well?” Kirk asked. “You can save all your people.”

  “I—I am more than willing to help,” Relaagith said, “to save my people, but I don’t know the seven-sound shutdown code. Only Yanorada knows it.”

  The younger one was nodding as if a string were yanking his head.

  Kirk moved over into the face of the younger one, who tried to back away but was pinned against a chair. “Is he telling the truth?”

  “Y-y-yes,” Ayaricon managed to get out.

  Kirk turned away and looked at Spock, who only raised one eyebrow.

  Kirk believed the two younger scientists. They had never faced anything like this before, and clearly had no ability to stand up to the intimidation Kirk had just put them through. Their boss, Yanorada, would be a different matter. He was clearly military and much older. It was no wonder he hadn’t trusted his two assistants with the code. Yanorada had known they would give it away at a moment’s notice.

  Kirk had another idea. Maybe the assistants didn’t have the code, but maybe one of them could find it quickly.

  Kirk moved over to Relaagith. “I will consider sparing your homeworld if you find the seven-sound code in two hours. Can you do that?”

&n
bsp; “I do not think so,” Relaagith said, his eyes downcast. “Yanorada’s protections are very complete. I would if I could, sir.”

  The younger Kauld’s head was again nodding in agreement.

  For some reason Kirk believed that. “Take them to the brig on the Enterprise.”

  A moment later the two young Kauld and the security detail around them vanished.

  “Well, Captain,” Spock said, turning back to the computer and going to work. “It seems your bluff was, as they say, called.”

  “Not completely,” Kirk said. “We still have one player in the action.”

  “I doubt if you will get information from Yanorada,” Spock said.

  “I think I’m going to let him think about his homeworld for a little while, let the pressure build. I’ll be on the bridge. Let me know if you have any luck.”

  “Again, Captain,” Spock said, “luck will have no part in this activity.”

  “Of course,” Kirk said. “Of course.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  PARDONNET SAT ALONE in his makeshift office and studied the reports that were pouring in from around the planet.

  The siliconic gel was covering massive areas, far more than he could have imagined possible so quickly. One of the settlements along the Big Muddy had gotten overwhelmed quickly during the night and the last of the residents had barely gotten out in time ahead of a wave of the deadly stuff.

  Pardonnet studied a large computer map of the world. Red areas showed landmass covered with siliconic gel, pink areas were not covered, but threatened within twelve hours, and there were almost no green areas left.

  The area around the canyon city was pink.

  There was a little good news on another front. One Conestoga was ready to hold a full load of colonists, and a second ship would be ready in a few hours. Those ships would hold thousands. It would help.

  He glanced at the pink area covering the city being built outside his office and then picked up status reports on the construction. All water and circulation systems were in place and working. Construction of living quarters would be finished within twenty-four hours. Enough food supplies were inside to feed the entire population for sixty days.