“I know,” McCoy said. “And I’m sorry that wasn’t enough.”
Chapter Twenty-four
KIRK SAT in his command chair and studied the image of Belle Terre on the screen in front of him. “Are all ships in position, Mr. Sulu?” Kirk asked.
“They are, sir,” Sulu said.
“Mr. Spock, are you ready?”
“Yes,” Spock said.
Kirk stared at the beautiful blues and whites and greens of Belle Terre below him. In the last twenty hours Spock had managed to figure out a way to rig up a sonic emitter that would break down the siliconic gel and deactivate the nanoassemblers at the same time.
Two birds in one swipe, so to speak.
The equipment was now installed in ten ships, which would spend the next three days covering every inch of the Belle Terre surface at least ten times. Spock had said that five times would be enough, but then agreed that if even one nanoassembler was missed, the entire problem could return.
So they were going to cover the planet ten different times, from ten different angles, on a pattern that would allow as many ships as possible to cover each mile of ground.
In three days there wouldn’t be a nanoassembler or a molecule of siliconic gel left on the planet. And not soon enough as far as Kirk was concerned.
He bet it wouldn’t be soon enough for all the people still living in the big mule ships, waiting to return to their homes. They would be the happy ones when this was over.
“Ready when you are, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said.
“All ships report ready, sir,” Spock said.
“Then let’s get this started. On my mark. Now!”
Below them the seven-sound code shut down nanoassemblers by the billions and smashed the siliconic gel molecules back into their natural components.
Kirk watched as the planet’s surface slowly moved past under the Enterprise. It was going to be a long three days, but to save this colony, a worthwhile three days.
The medical emergency room of the Brother’s Keeper was both a happy place and a somber one. All the patients but Charles had recovered from the shock of the olivium explosion. For some reason that Dr. Immi couldn’t explain, Charles wasn’t responding as well.
So for the last two days Tegan had been at her son’s side, with Dr. Immi and Captain Skaerbaek never far away. This morning she was half dozing, her head on the edge of the bed beside Charles, when as if in a dream she heard him say, “Mom, did we win? Did we beat the Kauld fleet?”
Captain Skaerbaek, who had spent most of the last two days sitting with her beside Charles, laughed, jumped to his feet, and shouted for Dr. Immi.
Tegan came right up out of her chair, hoping against hope that what she had heard hadn’t been a dream.
It hadn’t been.
Charles was lying there, looking at her, expecting her to answer his question about the fight with the Kauld. It was clearly the last thing he remembered.
Without realizing what she was doing, she was over Charles, hugging him and kissing his cheek. For the second time, her son had been given back to her. She was going to do everything in her power to make sure he wasn’t taken a third time. And she knew Captain Skaerbaek would also.
Dr. Immi managed to push her aside long enough to do a quick check of Charles; then the doctor smiled. “I think he’s going to be all right.”
“I’m just tired is all,” Charles said. “Did we win? I must have fallen asleep.”
Tegan reached over and hugged the firm, hard shoulders of Captain Skaerbaek, then smiled at her son. “We won.”
“I knew you could do it, Captain,” Charles said, smiling at Captain Skaerbaek
“So did I,” Tegan said, looking up at the captain’s beaming face. “So did I.”
* * *
Kirk walked down the sand dune to the spot where he remembered watching Lilian supervise children, seemingly a lifetime before. The sea was rough, the air full of salt and brine. But at least it wasn’t covered with siliconic gel. That was gone.
The nanoassemblers were gone.
The planet was recovering nicely, just as it had done after the Burn.
A lot of things had changed since that day he watched her here. A lot of things were the same.
The colonists were back in their homes, their crops, for the most part, growing again. Life was moving on almost as if this last attack hadn’t happened. Everything almost seemed the same.
Except for Lilian.
He stared down at the empty beach. She was gone and he just couldn’t quite get a handle on that fact for some reason. Over the years he’d lost many friends and fellow crew. Some he accepted, others he never did.
Lilian’s death was going to be one he’d never accept. To him she had always been too alive, too vibrant, too much a part of the colony life ever to die.
He had saved the colony three times now. But he couldn’t save Lilian.
He took a deep breath of the salt-filled air and wondered what would eventually become of this colony. Soon he would be taking the Enterprise back to Federation space. That was a long distance off and it was going to be hard to keep up with the events going on here. He knew he would try.
And he would follow how Reynold was doing as best he could. She had raised a good son. The boy had been devastated by the news, but he had known the risks. He had said so, tearfully, trying to be strong. Governor Pardonnet had already chosen a family to take care of the boy. They were good people, but they weren’t Lilian. Still, she had given Reynold a strong foundation. In time, the kid would be all right.
Kirk stared out over the ocean. He was going to miss this planet at times. But with Lilian gone, he wasn’t going to miss it as much as he would have.
He turned his back on the ocean and moved back up the dune toward the colony beyond. There was still a lot of work to do before he could head home. This afternoon he had meetings with the governor and his scientists. After that he needed to help set up a shipping system to get the olivium ore back to the Federation safely.
Lots and lots of work to do.
Of course, with a colony, there was always a lot of work to do. It just seemed that with Belle Terre, there was always more than normal.
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CHALLENGER
Diane Carey
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Challenger. . . .
“How could threat vessels get so close without tripping our sensors?”
“What do you expect from me? Look at the monitors. Completely gamma-seized.”
“Then we better saddle up and learn to ride blind.”
The sci-deck of Starfleet Cruiser Peleliu stank and smoldered. Part of the carpet was on fire, but nobody was bothering with it. Hot damage crawled like parasites through the mechanics under the sensor boards’ tripolymer skin. Burst connections caused tiny volcanoes of acid in ripped-open sheeting. A third of the pressure pads and readouts had quit working or were crying for damage control.
Nick Keller swiped his uniform’s dirty sleeve across his forehead, bent over the sensor boards, and tried to focus his stinging eyes. A fleck of insulation hung from a wing of his briar-patch-brown hair and blocked part of his view. For an hour they’d fielded attacks from enemies they couldn’t see, couldn’t target, and hadn’t expected. How had any hostiles known they were on their way out to Belle Terre? Or was this some new enemy that nobody in Starfleet or out at the colony even knew about yet?
The question went unanswered. Sensors couldn’t see through the bath of gamma radiation spewed by a pulsing neutron star so far away that even working long-range sensors wouldn’t have picked it up.
Beside him, Tim McAddis dribbled sweat from his pale forehead onto the sensor dials. His blond hair glistened with a frost of perspiration. “I’m used to seeing things a solar system away, not a lousy five hundred yards. Now that our deflectors a
re on full, we can’t even pick up phantom data like before.”
It was a hard thing for a science officer to admit.
Keller pressed a hand to McAddis’s hunched shoulder. “Look at the bright side. You’ll get the blame instead of me.”
McAddis grinned nervously. “The mighty second mate stands defiant.”
A knock on the cold-molded lattice grid near his knee got Keller’s attention. He found the first officer’s reassuring face peering up from the command deck seven feet below, through the lattice fence that prevented crewmen or tools from falling under the sci-deck rail. “What’ve you two got up there? How’d they come up on us?”
Without a good explanation, Keller knelt to meet him under the rail and handed over the unhelpful truth. “Derek, they must’ve cruised in cold. No engines. Coasting, like the old days of rocketry. We were looking for exhaust signatures, not solid objects. All I can figure is the bad guys are accustomed to blackout action and know how to maneuver on inertia. Without engines, they’re really invisible.”
“Mr. Hahn,” the communications officer interrupted, “sickbay reports thirty casualties.”
“How many dead?” Derek Hahn asked.
“They just said casualties. I don’t think they want to tell us.”
Kneeling up here in only a pretense of seclusion, Keller gripped the rail at the tremor in Tracy Chan’s voice. Everybody was shaken badly. They weren’t even sure yet how many of their shipmates were dead. Suj Sanjai at tactical had been killed in the first hit less than an hour ago. That grim hello had brought in critical seconds of attack before the Peleliu got its shields up. Since then, the minutes had been long and bitter, landing percussion after percussion on them from unseen foes who understood better than Starfleet how to fight during Gamma Night.
“Phasers direct aft,” the captain ordered. “Fire!”
Both Keller and Hahn looked at the command deck.
Staccato phaser fire spewed from the aft array, at targets no one could see, jolting the ship much more than normal. That was the damage speaking. The cruiser convulsed under Keller’s knee.
Keeping his voice low, he murmured, “What’s he targeting? He can’t possibly know where they are.”
Hahn shook his head, but said nothing. He watched Captain Roger Lake, stalking the center deck.
From up here on the half-circle balcony, Keller clearly saw the command arena below except for the turbolift. The science and engineering balcony where he knelt rested on top of the lift’s tube structure, a design meant to maximize use of the cruiser’s support skeleton. Two narrow sets of ladder steps, one to his left and the other to his right, curved down to the command deck on either side of the lift doors. Below, Crewman Makarios at the helm and Ensign Hurley at nav both hunched over their controls, staring at the main viewscreen, which stubbornly showed them only a static field interrupted every twenty seconds or so by a grainy flash of open space, fed by McAddis’s tedious attempts to clear the sensors. The largest screen on the bridge—on any Starfleet bridge—was their window to eternity. The two fellows at the helm were hoping for a lucky glimpse of the attackers, maybe get off a clean shot with full phasers.
To port of the helm the half-demolished tactical station was still unmanned, with Captain Lake’s stocky form haunting it as he tried to keep one eye on the main screen. Why hadn’t he called for somebody to replace Sanjai? Why was he so moody?
To starboard, Chan’s communications console was the only board on the bridge that had so far evaded damage, either direct or repercussive. Everybody else was struggling just to make things work at half capacity. Those first hits had done some nasty work.
Up here the engineering console on the balcony’s starboard side beeped madly, reporting dozens of damaged sites all over the ship, but there was no one to answer. The engineers had split for their own section as soon as the attack came, and behind him the environmental and life-support board went wanting too. Keller and McAddis were up here alone.
Almost alone.
The sci-deck offered a certain amount of privacy. Sound insulation and clever design of the ceiling shell prevented travel of much conversation from up here to the lower deck, where command conversations were also taking place. The two sections, then, could be functionally close, but not interrupt each other. Usually, Keller liked it up here. This was second-officer territory if ever there had been any. During this voyage, though, an added presence haunted the upper deck.
He glanced to his right.
There she was. That Rassua woman, Zoa, along for the haul. A cross between an ambassador and an inspector, she wasn’t in Starfleet, but she was here most of the time anyway, fulfilling her mission of “determining whether the Federation is up the standards of the Rassua.”
She stood on the upper deck as if someone had leaned an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus against the console, both legs braced, her gold face and thick hair in a waterfall of severe skinny plaits, her lined lips giving nothing away. In the months of travel, Keller had only heard her voice a couple of times. If she was any indication, the Rassua weren’t talkative.
Dressed in woven strips of leather that left her heavily tattooed shoulders bare, Zoa was markedly disparate from the Starfleet crew in their black trousers and brick-red jackets. If only she had boots on. Instead, she wore only some kind of crisscross thong sandals with thick soles, allowing her two-inch toenails to curve down like a hawk’s talons hooked over a branch.
And she never moved her face. Her blue-dot eyes followed the crew action here and below. It was like having a sphinx watch every move they made. Keller wished he could order her off the bridge. Roger Lake wanted her here. He liked showing off to an alien who was being courted by the Federation. The UFP wanted the Rassua alliance to guard their zenith borders.
So here she was, observing. If they got out of this, she’d have a real story for somebody back home.
Keller had hoped she’d get the hint and go below when the battle started, but apparently this was what she’d been waiting for all along and she wasn’t about to leave. He tried to ignore her. His skull throbbed.
Derek Hahn reached up and caught Keller’s wrist. “You okay? Your left eye’s dilating.”
His swollen temple ached under Keller’s probing fingers. “Feel like I got mule-kicked.”
“You got ship-kicked. For a minute there I didn’t think we’d come out of that spin. Harrison’s hands are full in sickbay, but I’ll have Ring come up here.”
“No, don’t. Savannah’s a passenger this trip. She shouldn’t have to be on the bridge.”
“Won’t hurt a Starfleet medic to work her passage. She wants to start a Special Services Rescue Unit at Belle Terre, she can start right here.”
“Were you a drill sergeant in a previous life?”
“Everybody needs a hobby.” Hahn looked under the scideck balcony toward the communications post. “Tracy, call Savannah Ring to the bridge with her bag of tricks.”
“Aye, sir. Medic Ring, report to the bridge with a field kit. Medic Ring to the bridge, please.”
“Nick!” McAddis erupted from the science board. “I’m getting a shadow! I think they’re coming in again!”
Without even attempting to confirm the readings, Keller glanced at the stocky form of their captain, pacing the lower deck between the helm and the command chair. “Tell him, Derek.”
Accepting Keller’s instincts, Hahn spun around. “Captain, brace for another pass!”
On the command deck, Captain Roger Lake didn’t order the crew to brace or any other preventive action. Instead he made a completely unexplained order. “Thrusters on! One-eighth impulse power!”
Hahn stepped away from the rail and croaked, “Sir, we shouldn’t be moving during Gamma Night!”
Lake shot him a glare. “We’ve got to outrun them while we can. I know how these people think.”
Keller pushed to his feet and spoke up, “Sir, I agree with Derek. One full-power hit from Peleliu would demolish any ship in this
sector. They don’t have anything that can match—”
“They’ve got everything we’ve got. Fire!”
Lake’s eyes were fixed on the forward screen, as if he saw something there. But there was nothing. Only a clicking blue cloud of static. Yet he was shooting, over and over, depleting their weapons, sending unthinkable destructive power racing through space behind them without effect.
Hahn came back to the rail and peered up at McAddis’s scanners. “If only we could go to warp speed . . .”
Gamma Night laughed in his face.
Hahn turned to watch Lake from behind, analyzing the set of the captain’s shoulders, the quick breathing, the cranky movements, the petulant glances. “We’re dead if we keep moving.” He jumped to the nearest ladder, climbed it, and joined Keller at the suffering sensors. His voice was very low. “He’s snapping, Nick.”
Cold dread washed down Keller’s spine. He glanced to his side, afraid the science officer had overheard, but McAddis had moved down the sensor bank and was preoccupied.
Keller’s hands turned icy. “Now, let’s not pick our peaches before they’re fuzzy.”
“We gambled,” Hahn said. “We lost.”
“We don’t know that yet, Dee,” Keller downplayed.
“His judgments are sluggish, he’s irrational—this stuff about how they’ve got everything we’ve got—who does he think is out there?”
Desperate to hold together whatever they had, Keller resisted the urge to face him and obviously be having a conversation that might get the captain’s attention. Quietly he said, “Harrison did a psych scan two weeks ago for chemical abnormalities. The results were indeterminate. This is just stress. He hasn’t been in battle for years.”
“Neither have I, but I’m not—”
“Hey, I’ve got blips on the short-range,” McAddis interrupted. “I think they might be moving away!”
Keller spoke past Hahn. “Captain, they might be moving off.”
“If we hold off on weapons fire,” Hahn added, “they might lose us. Sir!”
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