STARTREK®: NEW EARTH - WAGON TRAIN TO THE STARS Page 10

  “He tried to hit you,” Spock reminded, amused.

  “Did y’deserve it?” Scott asked.

  Kirk shrugged. “Of course.”

  “Thought so. Even locked in deep space,” Scott said, “we touch many lives in our travels.”

  “This from Commander Montgomery No-Artistic-Expression-Allowed Scott.” Kirk smiled again. “I have to admit, it’s been good to have you and the old crew to depend on during all this.”

  “Careful how you use that word ‘old,’ sir.”

  “You’ll never get old, Scotty. You’ll just ferment.”

  The chief engineer chuckled and scottished, “Go’ that right.”

  Though Kirk started to say something else, his mind suddenly cleared as, before him, the Crystobel and Macedon changed position, resulting in their parting before him like theatrical curtains. He found himself gazing up at his queen.

  Siren intoxication filled him, as if he could reach out and touch her, trace the bolts on her patchwork plates, tickle the call letters, kiss the witch.

  There, just above his eye level, rising slightly over the mismatched flock, was his Enterprise. From here he could look up to the underside of the starship’s dish-shaped primary hull, seductive and available, lit by the ship’s self-illumination system. Here in deep space, only the soft gold vapor from the nebula provided any other light, and that was on the other side of the ship. She made a dove-gray silhouette, backlit by the nebula, forelit by the funneled light of her own hull lanterns. Her swan neck and main hull, struts and nacelles shone like the body of a quiet Lipizzaner.

  He loved to see her from outside, and burned the vision into his memory. She had more than sturdiness and beauty, more than strength, even more than the elusive subliminal consciousness that makes sailors sure a ship is alive. She had a fathomless dignity that tethered him to her, and always would.

  “Sometimes it startles me,” he quietly spoke, “to find out that other people feel the same about their ships as I do. It’s easy to get arrogant, with a ship like her.”

  At his sides, Spock and Scott provided him their presence, but neither said anything. In his periphery he could see the glint of pride in Scott’s eyes, and the solemn respect in Spock’s.

  When his communicator whistled, he ignored it—the first time, anyway.

  Only when Spock touched his arm did he break from his conversation with the starship and spring back to his job. “Kirk here.”

  “Sulu here, sir.”

  Kirk turned again to look at the ship, as if he were speaking directly to her and not really to Sulu. “Problem?”

  “Possibly. Uhura just called from the Yukon. Dr. McCoy’s beaming over right now. They’ve got some kind of riot going on among the passengers. Something about the lung flu medication.”

  “Does she need backup?”

  “No, sir, she wants to handle it herself, using the emergency procedures she developed. She didn’t even want to disturb you, but I felt something like this should at least be reported.”

  “Very well, Mr. Sulu. I don’t suppose this critical emergency requires me to beam back to the Enterprise immediately? I hope? To stand by? Just in case?”

  “Oh . . . why, yes, sir, yes it does. Thank you for asking. We’re barely holding our own.”

  He took Spock by the arm and started pulling. “Then I’m coming right home. Kirk out.”

  Conestoga Yukon

  “Hold those people back! Where’s the security team from the Impeller?”

  “Right here, Commander!”

  “Report to Commander Giotto on the main deck. Doctor, what about the hold? They’ve got sick people from three ships laid out down there, and people from all three Conestogas want to come and tend them.”

  “They’re going to have to hold back their altruism. I want medical personnel only. Hey, you, get away from that hatch!”

  What was all the shouting about? Michael Kilvennan stepped out of the transporter vestibule on the Conestoga Yukon into a hive of shouts and clatter, demands and accusations that gave him an instant shiver up the spine. To his left, Lieutenant Commander Uhura was snapping orders to security teams who were holding groups of passengers at phaserpoint. To his right, Dr. McCoy held a padd and checked items off on some list or other while more security men made sure nobody got to him.

  “What’s going on here?” Kilvennan demanded. “What’s everybody so worked up about?”

  “Michael! Over here!”

  In the chorus of shouts and accusations, fist-waving and orders, he needed extra seconds to find his brother’s face in one of the crowds being held apart by guards. At twenty-two, Quinn Kilvennan was tall enough to wave over the helmets of the meaty guards, though when he tried to push through he received a nightstick in the shoulder. His buffalo plaid fleece vest disappeared and his winter camouflage sweatpants came up; then the whole patchwork disappeared into the flock of irrational passengers.

  “ ’Scuse me, Doctor.” Kilvennan pushed past McCoy and got to the crowd in time to prevent his brother’s getting hit again, but the guards wouldn’t let him through. “Quinn, don’t fight the guards!”

  “They won’t give us the medication we brought with us, Michael.” As he righted himself, Quinn’s usually ivory face was russet with fury, his dark hair in a flop. Who was this stranger? “It’s not theirs to confiscate! Josette and Ian are still sick and now Mom’s starting to get dizzy.”

  “How are Stefan and Mae?”

  “Oh, Stefan’s sorry he ever married into the family and Mae’s threatening to divorce you. How do you think they are? They’re scared and tired!” Quinn pointed across the crowded deck to McCoy. Quinn the poet, the bard, the storyteller, the devout fellow of faith thinking about priesthood today was maniacal and unfamiliar. “Starfleet says there’s not enough medication. They’ve got it, but they won’t give it to us!”

  “Can’t believe that,” Kilvennan countered.

  “Ask him!”

  “Dr. McCoy!”

  Leonard McCoy craned at him over the considerable shoulders of a guard who was pushing two passengers away from another group. When the way was cleared, the doctor crossed to him through a keenly felt Starfleet presence.

  “Captain Kilvennan,” McCoy began, “you should’ve stayed on Hunter’s Moon. This Conestoga’s quarantined. How’d you get past the beam shield?”

  Kilvennan shook his head, surprised. “Shield wasn’t up. Took it to mean the quarantine had been lifted. My wife and kids are here, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. Uhura! The beam shield’s been dropped. Do you know anything about that?”

  Lieutenant Commander Uhura pushed past a wall of security uniforms and joined them, scanning Kilvennan with an exotic but critical eye. “We dropped it to beam Captain Merkling’s security team in, but it was supposed to go right back up. Sulu’s falling down on the trafficking job.”

  “Or somebody’s tripping him,” McCoy commented. “I’ll bet my medical bag his board shows the shield’s up.” He turned to Kilvennan. “I’m sorry, Captain, but you have to go under the quarantine now. Your ship will have to do without you.”

  “Unacceptable,” Kilvennan replied. “I run a privateer ship with a small crew. Got the picket duty.”

  “Your mate will have to take command,” Uhura smartly said. “Even a privateer ship has a command line, doesn’t it?”

  He cocked a hip and worked up some insult. “‘Even’ a privateer ship?”

  “Then they’ll manage, won’t they? You’ll have to stay here.”

  “And no moving about between the decks,” McCoy added.

  “No moving between decks?” Kilvennan protested. More rules and regulations on ships that were supposed to make their own? “What is this, a prison ship? My family’s below!”

  The doctor’s brown awning of hair cast a shadow over his eyes as he lowered his chin in a fatherly manner. “Captain, we’re trying to keep a bronchial viral infection from spreading. Why can’t we get some cooperation?”r />
  “There’s a rumor going around that you have medication but you’re withholding it. True or not?”

  McCoy’s vibrant eyes glanced around, deeply troubled. He lowered his voice. “There’s a critical shortage. Part of the medical stores have been contaminated. Some of the uncontaminated medication’s been stolen. It’s showing up here and there as contraband, but people are giving it to children who aren’t very sick or who aren’t even sick at all. We’re trying to confiscate it and distribute it to the most severe cases first, including, I might add, your sister and your son. Can I count on your cooperation?”

  Just like that, he wanted cooperation? Around them, the shouts and protests of the passengers proved that nothing would be that easy between the citizens of the new colony and Starfleet officers assigned to escort them. Escort, not overlord.

  Yet, McCoy and the other doctors had been working tirelessly on the medical problem, Kilvennan had to admit. At least, that had been the outward appearance.

  “What about the medicine you do have?” Kilvennan asked. “Are you withholding it?”

  “We’re withholding it,” McCoy admitted, keeping his voice down, “because we need a base for synthesization. If we don’t have any, we can’t make more. What’s making people so angry is that we have to give it to some test cases in order to develop a vaccine, which we need as badly as we need treatment. It’s no good to cure part of the population if the disease keeps spreading. Eventually it’ll outspread the medication we still have. I need enforcement. Are you here to help or not?”

  The deadly statement drilled itself home right through the atmosphere of anger and fear on the open deck. Kilvennan scanned the frightened and angry people, his friends and neighbors, folks he would know for the rest of his life once they reached the new planet. On a whole planet, sixty-some thousand people wasn’t very many. Somebody here would probably marry his daughter someday.

  But he couldn’t promise McCoy that he would unconditionally enforce rules just because Starfleet said he should. He had to find another way past this ugly moment.

  “At least clear me to go to my family,” he implored. “How long is this quarantine going to last?”

  “We don’t know yet!” McCoy flared with frustration. “We could handle all this if people would calm down and quit competing for attention. I can’t treat them if I have to waste my time keeping them from infecting each—”

  An eruption of fury drowned him out as Quinn Kilvennan broke through the security line and plunged forward, his hands driving at the throat of a security guard.

  Trying to shove through crowd that surged after his brother, Kilvennan shouted, “Quinn, no!”

  The guard’s nightstick came up again, but Kilvennan was there. His shoulder plowed into his brother’s rib cage, driving both of them off the guard. Together they crashed into a support strut as their neighbors jumped out of the way. Kilvennan felt his head ring off the strut and winced, clamping his eyes shut as stars rolled around in front of them. No—no time to fade out. He forced himself to open his eyes and deal with the throbbing of his skull. Familiar faces tumbled past as he unknotted himself and felt around for Quinn. There he was.

  “Don’t hit a Starfleet guard!” Kilvennan pulled his brother upright and held him by both arms, feeling the anger course through Quinn’s body like electricity through a circuit. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “They’re authoritarian murderers!” Quinn’s young features twisted into an ugly mask. “Let go of me if you’re not gonna fight them!”

  From the crowd, Tom Coates’s booming lumberjack voice carried over the general squabble. “Give us what you promised, McCoy!” Coates stepped through and helped both Kilvennans to their feet, but his motions were harsh, even threatening.

  Wincing again as his head pounded, Kilvennan stood back to look into the faces of his brother and neighbors. What was wrong with them? Their faces were flushed, eyes ringed with red. Tom Coates was more like Santa Claus than a union boss—what was going on?

  Before he could speak, the whine of phasers broke behind him. Instinctively he drove his brother and Coates backward, down, out of the line of fire. Around them, dozens of people collapsed into a moaning heap.

  “Killers!” Quinn raved.

  Desperate, Kilvennan held him down and shouted. “No, no! It’s just light phaser stun! Stay down!”

  Rising from the heap, Kilvennan turned to Dr. McCoy and the security squad, and the half-dozen phasers now aimed at him. On the other side of the deck, a sheepish crowd of passengers now huddled, afraid they’d be stunned too. They were right.

  “Don’t shoot!” McCoy barked, grasping the arm of the nearest guard. “Captain Kilvennan, can you contain your friends?”

  Heaving with exertion, Kilvennan started to shake his head but stopped when it hurt too much. “Don’t know—they’re acting strange. Quinn, you stay down or I’ll knock you down myself! Tom, goes for you too.”

  “Don’t order me around, Michael,” Tom Coates roared. “My kid needs treatment! We have to turn back while there’s time to get home before people start dying!”

  Behind him, a pressing throng came forward again and shouted their agreement.

  “Turn back?” Kilvennan repeated. “Who had ever said anything like that? Let me try to handle this, will you? Because this mess isn’t doing it.”

  Coates’s enormous paw came out of the crowd and grabbed him by the collar. “We didn’t want Starfleet along in the first place! We hired you and the other privateers to protect us! Start doing your job!”

  Kilvennan squinted at Tom, at the fist knotted into his collar, at his brother’s pale lips and ringed eyes, and thought of his wife and children, in their quarters below on this Conestoga. Were they in the same condition?

  “How ’bout if you stay here a minute,” he ordered, in a tone he usually only used on his own crew.

  Would they listen? Would they hold back until he could figure all this out? If they didn’t, eventually he wouldn’t be able to stop the guards from stunning them all and incarcerating them for inciting a riot. Law? Rules? Nobody was that sure what applied here in space.

  Back at the Federation, everybody knew what the laws were. Out at Belle Terre, when they arrived, they would set up a court system and establish new laws of their own. Out here in space—nobody had every talked about that. The governor and Captain Kirk had wrangled back and forth since the Expedition left Federation space, and still the answers were fuzzy. What was the jurisdiction here?

  Holding his hands up in a passive manner to the guards, Kilvennan made a silent bet that the guards would let him cross to Dr. McCoy without shooting him down. “Doctor, there’s something else going on,” he warned. “These people don’t act like this, even when they’re worked up. My brother’s practically a monk, and I’ve never even seen Tom Coates work up a sweat.”

  “How can you say that about everybody here?”

  “I can say it about my brother and Tom. I’ve known Tom and his wife Lilian most of my life. Something’s wrong. Could that virus have symptoms you don’t know about yet? Affect their behavior? Make them agitated like this? Look at their eyes. No blood in their lips. Even if they’re angry, would they all have the same look in their faces?”

  McCoy scanned the fuming crowd, held back by guards with phasers, and the groaning mass of people who had been stunned. He stooped beside a dazed passenger, pressed the man’s eyelid up, and peered into his eye. “Hmm . . . Commander.”

  Uhura reappeared from a hatchway. “Right here, Doctor.”

  “I think we may have a medical reason our peaceful evacuation of a deck turned into a riot. I want to take one of these people back to the Brother’s Keeper and run some tests. Can you keep the peace here?”

  “I’ll keep it if I have to tie them all down and tickle their children. All right, you people, order has been restored, is that clear?” With her queenly presence casting a distinct damper on the waves of rage, Uhura motioned to the guards. �
�We will now continue the peaceful evacuation of decks four and nine so they can be sterilized. Any further incidents will result in arrests and charges.”

  “Here.” Kilvennan stepped away, and when he came back he was dragging Quinn. “Take my brother. He tests great.”

  “Are you flipped?” Quinn heeled back. “Turn myself over to these tyrants? They’ll dissect me!”

  Kilvennan pulled him close, got him by the back of the neck, and made him pay attention. “You’ll live through it. I’ll handle things here.”

  “Liar! You’re never here!”

  “Take him.” Burying his anguish at the sight of his brother in this foreign condition, Kilvennan roughly handed him to the two nearest guards. “Doctor, I want to see my family.”

  McCoy snapped his fingers at the hatchway guards. “Clear him through!”

  “Mae? Mae!”

  Kilvennan jogged past three fistfights and two arguments in his family’s corridor on the giant people-mover Yukon. The innards of the Conestogas were brilliantly designed, with four- and six-person family units that had fold-in sleeping racks and modest communal living areas with some games and a café. They’d all known the lifestyle here would be spare and that was the price they were willing to pay for several months. This way of life was hardest on the littlest kids, who just didn’t understand why they’d given up their lawns and trees and planetside playgrounds, their own rooms and unlimited choices for dinner for a really weird set of bunk beds.

  Teenagers had a hard time getting off by themselves. Adults were crammed together into a mutual living environment where decisions had to be cooperative and where cooperation frequently meant giving in or being quiet. Not easy for a bunch of people who were going off to find elbow room and a chance to freewheel. Living like bees wasn’t in their nature.

  Relief plunged through him at the first sight of his wife—anything could happen when a couple was separated in space. Even to see her each time gave him a thrill, but especially now.

  He was relieved, until Mae ran to him and lathered him not with an embrace but with a crack of her hand across his face.