STAR TREK: NEW EARTH - CHALLENGER Read online

She continued to stand there, unblinking. Defiance or agreement? He really couldn’t tell.

  Keller cleared his throat once, got a better grip on his boot, and thought about turning off the water. Steam was gone, at least.

  “Anything wrong?” he asked. “Anything else?”

  “You have no witnesses.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “On your body. Tracing of past deeds.” She scanned him up and down, and back up again. She might have been astonished, but who could tell?

  “Oh, tattoos. No, I don’t, we don’t . . . well, most of us don’t . . . some of us, anyway. Don’t. Not usually.”

  “You have no accomplishments,” she said. “We record our actions in witnesses.” Holding the stall door open with one of her toenails, Zoa looked abruptly down and devoted both hands to unhooking the front of her woven leather suit, which otherwise hid enough to protect everything but her arms and shoulders.

  Keller held out a hand. “Uh—I don’t need to see—”

  She was already moving her fingers from her right elbow up to her shoulder and down her front diagonally to the opposite hip as she stood pretty much fully exposed before him. “This testify my actions at Molifab Temple Horror, showing each day turmoil. Upon leg shows Dut Mystery in which I led an trail jump. Here, shows my action during Uprising of the Gorals. Lower is—”

  “That’s fine, ma’am, you have very nice past deeds.” Interrupting her travelogue, Keller beat down a shiver. “But if you don’t mind, I’d like to get dressed before we continue this.”

  She looked up, still holding her suit open. “Dress.”

  Sure, what’s stopping you? At least he had permission.

  “Computer, shower off.” He eyed the towel, hanging on a hook behind Zoa. She wasn’t moving out of the way.

  He was just thinking about stepping on past her when the door chime out in the main room jangled. Keller opened his mouth to speak up, but Zoa was faster.

  “Come in!” she called.

  “No—” He winced. The door panel hissed open, letting somebody else in.

  “Nick?”

  “Ah. Savannah. Lovely.”

  Savannah Ring poked her head into the shower area, saw Keller, saw Zoa standing there with her leather unhooked, and sniffed at the fading steam. “Interrupting?”

  “Nah,” Keller uttered. “Want to wash your hair? Get a tattoo?”

  “I like your boot.” Ring leaned against the doorjamb. “Can I look at that one?”

  “Little later.”

  “Did you two have a talk?”

  “Does it matter, so close to our destination?”

  “You promised. I need some sleep.” She nailed Zoa with a stare. “Without an audience.”

  Zoa was unimpressed. Her expression remained static.

  “Savannah,” Keller attempted, “would you be a shipmate and toss me something to wear?”

  “Oh, certainly. Let’s see . . . here you go.”

  She tossed him his other boot.

  “Thanks,” Keller groaned.

  “Anytime.”

  “Bridge to Mr. Keller.”

  Sure they could psychically see him standing here with his boots, he rasped, “Keller, Grand Central Spaceport, what is it, Tracy?”

  “We’re on final approach to Belle Terre and should be there within forty-five hours, sir. The Enterprise is hailing on telemetry. Captain Kirk’s asking for our reports.”

  “I take it Roger’s not on the bridge?”

  “He says he doesn’t want to be bothered till we make orbit. Mr. McAddis thought we better notify to somebody. Am I bothering you, sir?”

  “I don’t think that’s possible right now.” Keller found himself watching with hypnotic silliness as Zoa rehooked her outfit and Savannah sneered her opinion.

  “The reports, sir?”

  “Oh . . . ah, reckon they’re meant to be sent, aren’t they?”

  “Sir, Mr. Shucorion asked me to forward Captain Kirk his log of the encounter and the loss of his ship. Should I?”

  Shucorion’s report about the wrecking of Kirk’s emissary ship? A vessel representing a whole civilization here in the cluster? Would that be a good thing to be flapping around the waves? Keller would’ve preferred an in-person report, something he could have a little control over, but did he possess that authority? Shucorion was a free agent, not part of the Peleliu’s jurisdiction, sent by James Kirk, who outranked everybody else out here.

  He wished he knew what to do. Was there a regulation to cover it, for him to brace himself on? He hadn’t reviewed the regs since getting stuck with first officer. This was his first shower since then too. Rough week.

  He thought about slinking over to the coin and giving it a toss. It was still in his pants pocket. Way over there on the bunk.

  The two women in his life stood watching him for his next decision.

  Was this how being first officer would be? Standing without anywhere to hide, people vulturing him, judging his every choice, and betting their lives?

  When had he signed up for that?

  “Sir?” Tracy Chan was still waiting for his orders.

  He wanted to pass it off, tell her to disturb Lake and let him be the captain. Suddenly concerned for Chan, seeing in his mind that crew manifest roll on the screen in Lake’s quarters, the names of his shipmates, friends, innocent crewmen, under the skewering eye of their captain in his unknowable state of mind, Keller shrugged his naked shoulders.

  “Send it. Let the chips fall.”

  “Aye, sir. Sorry I disturbed you.”

  “It’s nothin’.”

  Chapter Nine

  U.S.S. Enterprise, in orbit,

  planet Belle Terre

  The captain’s office

  “I SIMPLY CAN’T imagine what could cause this much olivium to cluster and exist in such a concentrated amount in one area of space-time. And yet, here it is. When theory conflicts with reality, we must change our theories. . . .”

  “Change them to what, Spock?”

  “I am . . . at a loss . . .”

  The Vulcan’s voice tapered off to nothing. He stood with his arms tightly folded, not in the relaxed manner that was his usual style, but in a kind of protect-me stance, as if he were continually expecting to be cold and hoped to be ready.

  Spock, muttering?

  Jim Kirk hadn’t let himself believe what he was hearing and seeing. Not until today. He’d suddenly gotten up this morning and believed everything. Just like that. Like a stone wall crumbling. Spock was his anchor, and was slipping.

  “Sit down,” Kirk invited. “We’ll talk it through. Maybe something’ll surface.”

  Though he resisted the idea for a moment, Spock finally indulged in his own kind of shrug and slid into one of the guest chairs, where he then sat staring at the same corner of the desk he had stared at a moment ago.

  Usually they didn’t spend much time in the captain’s office. In fact, this was the least-used quarter of the whole starship. Only administrative duties occurred here. Kirk even preferred the austere briefing room to this place, because he felt less cornered there.

  But they were waiting to have a meeting that couldn’t be avoided. As he paced around behind his desk, across the tall viewports showing the constant angle of Belle Terre’s equatorial zone, he wished he hadn’t asked Spock to come here this morning. Disturbed and preoccupied, Spock would probably be better off working.

  The dead air started to niggle at Kirk as he paced back along the windows and all the way around the desk, and around Spock, who sat in one of three guest chairs.

  “The ’bots are putting olivium back into the moon, redepositing it,” he repeated, citing Spock’s new report of only five minutes ago. He needed to hear it again, to speak the words so they would sink into his mind and he would be able to call up the image in an instant, later, when he needed it, when he had to convince himself to fight or make a decision he’d have to live with for decades. His voice sounded detached from his body, as if
he were listening to someone else speak. “They pass straight through the moon’s body, just as they seem to do here, with buildings and ships. The moon-based harvesting process has been stopped, the facilities evacuated . . . the probes are putting the olivium back in the moon. You’re certain of that.”

  “Yes,” Spock mournfully confirmed, his eyes focused on the glossy edge of the desk. “We took every reading we could imagine to take. They are definitely confiscating harvested olivium and reintegrating it into the Quake Moon’s unstable core. My concern is that, once enough mass is accumulated, the moon will once again become a detonation threat.”

  “This isn’t over yet, Spock,” Kirk assured him. He knew perfectly well this wasn’t the only thing bothering Spock. What good would it do to pressure him to let his feelings be known?

  Kirk felt the absence of a quip, a cut, a snide comment, and the inerrant response that always helped. For a fleeting instant he almost tossed a caustic joke himself, just to shake Spock out of his gloom.

  Where was a cynical physician when they needed one? Yes, that was the missing element—McCoy. They hadn’t heard from him in more than a week. The last report had been sketchy and short. Something about tracking some kind of bug or other.

  Hurry it up, Bones. I need you here.

  “If you’re sure,” he contemplated aloud, “then it means the ’bots aren’t taking the olivium with them when they warp out.”

  “That seems to be the case.” Spock’s voice was hollow, troubled.

  Stabbing at empty air, Kirk threw an accusative question. “Then why are they leaving at all? Just to come back later?”

  Giving up on the empty stare, Spock met his eyes with a silent doubt. He had no answer, and apparently took the question as rhetorical.

  Pacing like a cat, Kirk swept his gaze across the room. “Then why leave . . . Could they be going somewhere to get more fuel or energy? To be somehow repaired or recharged?”

  Clinging to the captain’s thin thread of logic, Spock allowed his brow to furrow in thought. “Certainly great energy is needed to do what they do . . . .”

  His words petered out, like ashes cooling.

  Spock was Jim Kirk’s oasis of stability. To lose that oasis—it shook him deep.

  A gold strike like this, once confirmed, should be nothing but sheer joy for men like Kirk and Spock, whose entire lives had been devoted to the betterment of the Federation and even those outside it. Technological advances, as Spock had long ago said, were the most fleeting. The Federation didn’t hold many secrets for long. They’d hold on long enough to get an edge, and then start sharing.

  And that was well. It would happen again with the olivium, in its time. That time might be another hundred years. For now, it was Kirk and Spock’s duty to hold on tightly to their new possession, to get a firm grip on it and do the most with it before it could be stolen and used against the Federation. If the Federation held the technology exclusively for a while, this would be good for everyone. If someone else held it exclusively, the results could be galactic disaster.

  Kirk saw all the implications in Spock’s tired eyes when he looked at him today. Even Spock needed things to go just right from time to time, the sensation that luck was with them. This simple mission had turned into a monumental turning point for the Federation, and Spock felt as if he were the hingepin between the bright future and a crushing disaster.

  Acute empathy pierced Kirk. Usually the shoe was on the other foot—Kirk in the clutches of his own inner struggles, with Spock bracing him from all directions. This time, things were turned around. The olivium was of supreme consequence to Spock. More than anyone, Spock grasped the imperative gravamen of possessing such a resource of advancement . . . and of losing it.

  Now, the way things were going, they might actually lose it.

  “We’re missing something, Spock.” Kirk said the words as if they were a magic formula that could summon a breakthrough.

  “We’re making an assumption that’s throwing us off. Let’s review. The ’bots are taking olivium and putting it back where it came from. What do we know about olivium?”

  “Olivium,” Spock said, “is a rare element that exists both in our universe and in subspace. Until now, it has existed only in laboratories and in small quantities. Theoretically, it cannot occur naturally in the quantities that we find it in here. Clearly, however, our theories are wrong, because we did find it here . . .”

  “Spock, that’s it!” Kirk said. He began pacing back and forth. “We’re assuming our theories are wrong. What if they’re right?”

  “That would mean,” Spock said, animation returning to his face, “that the presence of the olivium on the moon is not natural. That it was placed there by some entity or entities with a science beyond ours.”

  “Right,” Kirk said. “Any idea on who they might be?”

  Spock looked thoughtful. “When we first met Shucorion, he told us that the Blood and the Kauld had been presented with warp capacity by a technologically advanced race he called ‘The Formless.’ The odds are that the same race is involved here.”

  “I agree,” Kirk said. “So what do we do now?”

  “Judging from our experience with advanced beings . . . we confront them and alter their thinking.”

  Kirk smiled for a moment, then got serious again. “So how do we find them? We’ve been dealing with their ’bots exclusively, and that means we’re one step behind all the time. We have to start thinking more aggresively.”

  Still tense, even giving in to a shuddering sigh, Spock shifted his legs and tightened his arms. “Thus far, we’ve been tracking them as far as long-range sensors will allow. During Gamma Night, of course, we have no means to continue tracking. They have been moving off on roughly the same tangent, but of course they may leave the solar system and change course. We have no idea.”

  “Wait a minute.” Kirk snapped his fingers. “If you’re tracking them? They’re going somewhere, they’re not just disappearing. They’re traveling.”

  Spock looked up, noting the change in Kirk’s tone. “Yes, apparently.”

  Kirk pivoted on a foot. “Then we can follow them to their masters.”

  Hope sank again in Spock’s eyes, after the most fleeting of glimmers. “They break to warp nine almost immediately, Jim. Sustained warp nine, even for the Enterprise—”

  “Yes, I know, Spock, I know.” He tried to sound gentle, not frustrated, but failed. “I hate to leave without McCoy and Uhura . . . you haven’t heard from them, have you?”

  Though Spock shifted toward an answer to the pointless question, the door chime kept him from speaking.

  Ah, a captain/admiral/trail-boss’s work is never done. “Come.”

  The door slid open. Captain Roger Lake was a stout man with sandy hair thick in the front but sparse in back, and seemed ill fit to the new design of the Starfleet uniform. Perhaps it was the day’s growth of stubble and the slightly crooked belt that made him appear uneasy here, or somehow incomplete.

  Less than jovially, Kirk offered, “Captain Lake, welcome aboard.”

  “Thanks,” Lake droned. “You wanted us to check in as soon as we arrived. Okay, you got us. My first officer, Nick Keller.”

  “Mr. Keller.”

  “Acting first officer,” Keller quickly corrected, and extended a handshake to Kirk. “Proud to meet you, Captain. You too, sir, really proud.” He offered an appreciative moment to Spock, who simply nodded once with polite elegance.

  As he rose in deference to the captain who had just entered, Spock’s presence cloaked the room in sudden formality. Not in the room four seconds and already the Peleliu’s master was a man Kirk didn’t like.

  While Roger Lake barely acknowledged Spock at all, Nick Keller held eye contact with Spock a few seconds longer than necessary, a sensitive and poignant moment, almost as if they’d known each other for years. Of course, for a man Keller’s age, maybe thirty, and most of the youth of Starfleet, certainly there had been a tacit intimacy
between them and the tall tales of James Kirk and Mr. Spock. This—no, this was not just that. Keller wasn’t just offering hero worship or hollow compliments. He really did appreciate Spock. How he felt about Kirk remained a mystery, but Kirk sported a sudden deep gratitude for Keller’s unshielded gift to Spock, who needed it so much right now.

  A pause got him a good look at this younger man. Average in almost every way, Keller was as tall as Spock, but there the resemblance ended. Keller’s eyes were astute and animated, and immediately friendly, though cloaked by the tensions of the moment. He suspected what they were in for, Kirk sensed. After all, his authorization had been on the passage clearance of Peleliu’s reports. Keller seemed uneasy as he stood behind his captain, yet was attenuating his unease. Good self-control. Trouble still showed in his pressed lips. Too honest to hide it all. Loyalty, and honesty too? Could be a problem mixture.

  Still, Keller had bothered to offer a genuine moment of laud for Spock, a special effort that Kirk found endearing. He hadn’t had to do that.

  “Have a seat,” Kirk suggested, though he immediately got the feeling nobody was going to be relaxed here.

  Spock didn’t sit down again, but came around behind Kirk’s chair and retreated against the tall cool viewport. Kirk got a rush of déjà vu to those old days on the Enterprise when Spock stood at his shoulder in his king’s-blue tunic, his charcoal hair reflecting a slick of soft light from the bridge dome. Today, framed by the planetary vista of Belle Terre and space beyond it, he appeared supremely in place, though haloed by his current bane—the Quake Moon.

  “We have the reports about your voyage,” Kirk began. “Without incident until eight days ago, when you confronted vessels that appeared to be Kauld. You engaged these vessels and suffered significant damage, as well as the loss of several crewmen, including your executive officer. Accurate so far?”

  “For a report,” Lake grunted. “Leaves out a lot. You had to be there.”

  “Did these ships attack you during Gamma Night? Maneuvering during the blackout?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Gamma Night makes a mess of sensor readings. We weren’t sure of all that much. Some shapes came at us, we fought them, they went away, some crew got killed. It happens.”