by L. A. Graf
Bodies—human bodies—tumbling into the ravenous dust. Chekov counted five before they were lost to the storm. He couldn’t tell if any of them were alive. For their sakes, honestly hoped not. While the dust storms at ground level hadn’t proved nearly powerful enough to strip a person’s flesh from their bones, he wouldn’t have wanted to meet these upper-level wind blasts unprotected and awake to realize it.
“Oh, my God!” Bartels threw off his seat restraint, standing to splay his hands against the viewscreen as though a closer proximity to this horror might clarify his view. “What happened? Where’s Carmela?”
Chekov didn’t bother to answer. He punched in a command that made the shuttle take up a safer holding pattern above the dust, then unlatched his own seat restraint with one hand and punched Bartels across the face with the other.
“Pull up!” Uhura braced herself against the downward rush of free fall, grateful for the shock webbing that automatically leaped out from the seat and laced itself around her. She could see the dark desert landscape hurtling toward them on Sulu’s side of the cockpit. “Pull up—we’re falling too fast!”
“I’m trying!” Sulu had slammed the controls for his two working antigravs as far to one side as possible, trying to compensate for their weakened left thruster. Unfortunately, that was the side toward which they were falling. Uhura felt her heartbeat hammer up into her throat as the ground loomed closer and closer, then g-forces slammed her backward into her seat as the scenery abruptly rolled sideways. The pilot had finally managed to convert the Bean’s downward momentum into an equally high lateral velocity. Before Uhura could suck in even one relieved breath, however, the experimental shuttle tore through the last few meters of clear air and plowed deep into the haze of Llano Verde’s perennial dust storms.
“Can you see the ground?” she shouted at Sulu.
“No, but I know it’s there.”
A rising spiral of wind caught the Bean and tossed it upward before Uhura even had time to be surprised by the pilot’s response. Sulu grunted and wrestled the shuttle back down again, using the friction of the rising air mass to reduce their speed to more reasonable levels.
“The problem with flying near the Gory Mountains usually isn’t hitting the ground,” he explained to Uhura. “It’s staying close enough to the ground to see where we’re going.”
“Oh.” The shuttle bounced through another turbulent updraft, and she had to grit her teeth against the uneasy protest of her stomach. “Did you see the Little Muddy before the crater wall blew out?”
“No. Did you?”
“Yes.” She’d known as soon as she’d seen the broad glimmer of water in the distance why Sulu had been sure none of the other rivers they crossed could be the trunk stream. “It was further off to the southwest, about twenty-five degrees to the crater wall where the falls came over.”
“Twenty-five degrees?” Sulu cast a thoughtful glance out through the cockpit window. Uhura tried to follow his line of sight, but the only thing she could see in any direction was a roiling gray sea of dust. She heard the pilot take a deep breath; then the Bean veered abruptly to the right. “I’m just guessing,” Sulu said, before she could ask. “For all I know, I’m flying us right back to Bull’s Eye.”
“I don’t think you are,” she said. “Can you feel the downslope winds?”
“No.” Sulu paused a moment, then smiled at her. “Which means we must be riding on them. Thank you, Uhura.”
“You’re the one who guessed right,” she reminded him. “Can we get any closer to the ground?”
His answer was a series of controlled downward swoops, each canted only slightly by their malfunctioning antigrav. The final drop took them through a filmy underbelly of dust and back into the relatively clear air of a broad valley. Uhura glanced down, eager to see if they had finally located the Little Muddy, then felt her breath evaporate out of her as if she had been punched.
The river below them had gone from the contained shimmer of high water she had originally glimpsed to a churning black chaos of mud, water, and debris filling the entire river valley from side to side. It was easy to see the break and crash of wave crests hurtling downstream with that deluge, but Uhura didn’t realize until Sulu swooped downward one more time that some of them were taller than the Enterprise.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “The flood wave’s already going down the Little Muddy.”
Bartels reacted instinctively, lashing out with the phaser in his hand instead of firing it. Chekov ducked back away from his swing, caught it, and twisted the gun out of the technician’s fist before he had a chance to recover. A glare of brilliant sunlight washed through the cockpit as the shuttle broke through the grimy clouds to freedom. Whether that blinded Bartels or simply shocked him into submission, Chekov couldn’t tell. But he struck the technician one last time before dragging him out of his seat, just to make sure there would be no further unpleasant surprises.
“Gwen!” Chekov could hear the banging rattle of her fight with the suit locker door, but didn’t dare turn away from Bartels long enough to check on her progress. “Get the aft doors!” he shouted when he heard the door finally slam aside. “Lock them! Now!”
Dogs swept to circle him from behind, darting in to steal sniffs of Bartels’s prostrate body while Chekov quickly checked the charge on the phaser and lowered the setting to heavy stun. Trading his purloined rifle for this more familiar weapon lifted a heavy burden from his heart.
“Who’s driving?” Thee asked as she slid to a stop by the cargo bay doors.
“The computer.” Chekov glanced at her over his shoulder, only to have Bartels stir groggily and recapture his attention. “Have you got those doors?”
A frustrated bang prefaced her answer. “There’s no lock.” He realized she must have kicked at the door.
“Then jam them. Destroy the controls.” He danced away from Bartels only long enough to grab a handful of the restraining straps bolted into the starboard wall. “She’ll have to open them manually. That should buy us some time.” An adjustment to the phaser’s settings and a quick burst of fire severed the connections.
On the other end of the compartment, Thee swept up the cutting torch they’d left on the floor outside the cargo bay and began attacking the door controls. “Who are we locking in?”
“Her name’s Serafini. She’s his only surviving accomplice.” Chekov flipped Bartels onto his stomach and planted a knee between his shoulders. “Don’t move!”
The pressure of a phaser against the back of his neck was all the threat Bartels needed.
“How can you do this?” Bartels hurriedly tucked his other arm behind his back once Chekov had twisted the first one. “There’s been . . . a hull breach, or an explosion . . .” He squirmed a little against the straps, but didn’t really try to pull away. “We’ve got to find out what happened back there!”
Chekov couldn’t contain a single snort of morbid amusement. “What happened back there, Mr. Bartels, is that your girlfriend used the cargo airlock to dispose of your foot soldiers. Without bothering to consult you.” Giving the bindings one last yank to make sure they were tight, he quickly looped the second strap and slipped it over Bartels’s feet. “Apparently I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t scheduled to see the rendezvous.”
“She wouldn’t do that to me.” But the feverish shake of his head said he was more shocked than certain.
Handiwork done, Chekov stepped back and tucked the phaser into his belt. “It would serve you right if I left you here to find out if that was true.” But even felons deserved better than frontier justice. Grabbing the back of Bartels’s coverall in both hands, he heaved him to his knees and dragged him toward the nearest cargo crate.
Thee paused with the laser cutter still glowing in her hands. “If he’s not staying here, where is he going?”
“He’s going to stand trial.” Chekov threw open the lid, then leaned down to clear a space in the tangle of shock webbing inside. “He was willing to
murder thousands of people under his care. That’s not something I can let him get away with.”
She turned off the torch and came forward a step. “But you promised—”
Bartels landed inside the crate with a thump. “Sulu promised,” Chekov pointed out as he snapped the shock webbing tight around his unwilling cargo. “I only promised not to call the ship.” He kicked the side of the crate to silence Bartels’s protests. “Shut up. At least you’re going out the lock alive.” Then he slammed the lid on the technician’s horrified expression.
Thee joined him in shoving the crate across the deck. The dogs darted back and forth in front of them, herding the crate toward the lock. “Other than a certain visceral gratification, throwing him out the airlock accomplishes what?” Her voice was calm despite the fearful paleness of her face.
Chekov reached up to cycle the airlock door. “It keeps him alive after the shuttle goes down.”
When the hatch slid aside, he bent to shoulder the heavy crate into the lock, this time without Thee’s assistance. She stood watching him, hands at her sides.
“Pavel . . .” She crossed behind him and bent to look him squarely in the face. “Why don’t we just take him up to the orbital platform?”
Chekov backed out of the lock, closed the door. “Because Sulu and Uhura can’t evacuate everyone between Bull’s Eye and Eau Claire.”
“Neither can we.”
“No . . .” The outside door whisked open on a sky so bright and clear, it seemed to belong somewhere else. Bartels’s crate tumbled free, the timer for its breaking chute and sonic beacon activated the moment it began its fall. “But if we can divert the flood itself, evacuations won’t be necessary.”
Thee followed him into the cockpit, her gaze intent on his face as he slid back into the pilot’s chair. “I’m assuming you have an idea,” she finally prodded.
Oddly enough, the fact that he knew she was going to be angry with him made him more uncomfortable than any other part of his plan. He busied himself plotting the new course into the shuttle’s console.
“Pavel, answer my question.”
He glanced aside at her, couldn’t bear the fury building up in her dark eyes, and looked down at his controls again. “We have a cargo hold filled with olivium, and a shuttle we can aim.” He started the perilous dip back into the dust storm. “We should be able to create an impact crater at least the size of Bull’s Eye, big enough to catch the flood.”
Her voice was almost as cold as her eyes. “Do I get a vote in this?”
“Gwen . . .”
“I’m not an idiot, Pavel. I know what you mean by ‘aiming.’ Was I supposed to just sit here and not notice where you were headed until we hit the ground?”
The black scar of water resolved through the floor of dust, rampaging down a river valley now boiling with mud and debris. “No, you’re supposed to get into a cargo crate and follow Bartels down. The shock webbing will protect you and the dogs, and the crates are air permeable—you’ll be fine until help arrives.” He felt more than heard her intake of breath, and pushed on before she could interrupt. “The crates all have sonic beacons, to help the colonists find them in the dust. It’s your best chance.”
“And you?” When he didn’t answer, she pressed, “What’s supposed to happen to you?”
Chekov brought them low enough to feel the flood-churned air vibrate against the belly of the shuttle. He didn’t know where the cities lay along this swollen river, and prayed his best guess would take him far enough down the span to accomplish what he intended.
“Damn you!” Thee punched him hard on the shoulder, hard enough to make him turn away from the console and face her at last. “Damn you! You don’t have the right to endanger yourself anymore! Don’t you understand that? You’re first officer on board a starship! You have to think of your captain, your crew!”
“I have to think of these people, too. You know that’s what being a Starfleet officer means!” He captured her hands in both of his, astonished by the depth of her anger as well as strangely touched by it. “Gwen, I’m sorry. But we don’t have time to talk about this now.”
She tried to jerk herself free, couldn’t. “If you get your way, you bastard, we won’t get a chance to talk about it later, either.” Her eyes, luminescent with rage, tore a hole straight through his heart. “And what about Serafini?”
“Yes . . .” That voice, as calm and smooth as a sheet of ice, whipped Chekov out of his seat and into the cockpit doorway. “What about Serafini?”
* * *
Sulu had flown a lot of aircraft at speeds he knew other pilots would never reach. Sometimes it was a deliberate test to find the upper limits of flight, other times an urgent mission that he had to use his piloting skills to carry out. But never before had he felt as if he was racing with death itself, in the form of a giant battering flood wave released by human greed and malice.
“There!” Uhura’s voice had grown so raw with exhaustion and pent-up emotion that he barely recognized it. “Sulu, is that the wave front?”
He pulsed the back antigrav again, a risky maneuver while in flight but one which gave the Bean an added spurt of forward momentum. The two working generators had long since reached the red line Scotty had installed on their power monitors as a warning against overload. Sulu was praying that the Enterprise’s cautious chief engineer had built in his usual generous safety margin. The only thing working in their favor was the ancient twists and turns of the Little Muddy Valley. Carved deep into the resistant bedrock of the Gory Mountains, those incised meanders were forcing the floodwater to take a less direct and slower path than the Bean. That advantage was finally paying off.
“That’s it,” he said, and pulsed the back thruster once again. The Bean spurted through the choppy backwash of wind and dust rising off the thundering wave front, then passed directly over the immense wall of rolling water. It moved more like an avalanche than a flood wave, toppling hundreds of meters down from its crest onto the unsuspecting valley below. The landscape it drowned was already devastated, destroyed by the bomb blast of compressed air that the flood wave pushed ahead of it. Sulu winced as he saw forests explode like matchsticks and entire buildings shatter to bits. His only hope was that earlier floodwaters had chased most of the animals and humans away from this part of the valley.
“How much farther to No Escape?” Uhura shouted over the constant booming of the flood. They were putting it behind them with excruciating slowness, but each second they gained was another second in which to evacuate the river town.
“At least another fifty kilometers.” Through the usual haze of dust, Sulu could just see the deep notch that the river had carved through the wall of the Gory Mountains. He altered the Bean’s course to head there more directly, abandoning the doomed curves of the Little Muddy to their inevitable fate. “It’s just on the other side of that canyon.”
Uhura fell silent, watching the Little Muddy’s gorge loom from a shadowy gap between the mountains to a deep-walled rock chasm as they got closer. “Do you think that will act like a safety valve, and hold back some of the flood?” she asked at last.
Unfortunately, Sulu had been forced to suffer through enough fluid hydraulics classes back at the academy to know the bleak answer to that question. “No,” he said grimly. “As the water rushes into a narrower space, it’ll go even faster. And get even higher. By the time it finally hits No Escape, there might not be anywhere left to evacuate to.”
The blue glint of Serafini’s rifle guarded the shoved-open hatch, but it was the steel in her eyes that halted Chekov. That, and the gut-deep realization that if he tried to reach for the phaser on his belt, she would kill him.
“You’ve really screwed up everything, haven’t you?” Her eyes were narrow and cold in her radiation-burned face. “Now I’ve gotta choose between getting blown to bits with you or staying alive just so I can spend the rest of my life in jail.”
Chekov made an effort to seem relaxed, to drop his ha
nds so that he was closer to his weapon. “Surrender peacefully and testify against Bartels. The authorities might deal with you more leniently.”
“I suppose I could do that. But . . .” Serafini reached out for her hat, letting its wide brim shade the intentions lurking in her eyes. “You know what my biggest character flaw is?”
Chekov didn’t even want to venture a guess.
“I’m spiteful.”
He flashed into motion before she’d finished speaking, dodging aside and down, bringing the phaser up between them in both hands. He felt the heat of its lightning, and was fairly certain he’d brought his weapon to bear and fired. But he couldn’t hear it over the rifle’s more thunderous report.
Chapter Seventeen
ALL THE WAY through the Little Muddy gorge, Sulu had been praying that they would find No Escape already evacuated, its citizens forewarned by the flood that had wiped out the lower half of town. Perhaps some had left, but it looked like even more had elected to stay behind, camping out on roofs and second-story porches to watch the waters rise around them. Sulu made one frustrated spiral above the town, battling the downdrafts off the mountain scarp while he looked for a good place to land. He didn’t have any better luck than the first time they’d come here. No Escape’s charming pseudo-Mediterranean design hadn’t included any large squares or public parks, and from the air Sulu couldn’t tell whether the silver gleam of water in the streets represented puddles or neck-deep streams. He finally ended up hovering over the faded red cross of the medical clinic, the same roof where he’d unloaded emergency medical supplies two days before. It was large enough for the downdraft from his antigravs to push the crowd of flood-watchers out to the building’s rim, making space for him to land in their midst. The Bean settled at an awkward angle, its lame left thruster bumping down hard on the roof while the other two settled on softer cushions of idling air.
