STAR TREK: NEW EARTH - CHALLENGER Read online

  Why were they being attacked? Who was doing this? Why? He forced himself to think, dismiss the ugly numbers, think, think.

  Somebody was trying to discourage the cruiser from going out to Belle Terre, or kill them before they got there, before they could join the Enterprise in its defense of the new colony and the precious substance discovered there.

  Must mean the Enterprise was already encountering trouble out there. Whoever was attacking Peleliu understood something about Starfleet configuration and knew where to aim. Now Peleliu was stumbling in its own wreckage.

  Still, a cruiser was a tough breed, built for exploration, yes, but also equipped to defend itself against anyone who objected to being surveyed. With a man like Roger Lake in command there wouldn’t be any turning back.

  But their captain wasn’t himself, just as Derek Hahn suspected. Against his own will Keller read the change clearly in the set of Lake’s shoulders and the fact that he hadn’t even looked down the hole to see about the condition of his two mates. Down in the lift, with Derek there to make the decisions, it had been easier to resist.

  Here, with Hahn out of commission, Keller was abruptly, and for the first time, unprotected against whatever the captain might choose to do.

  Thirteen . . . thirty-four . . . out of a crew of only eighty.

  The past rushed up to claw at him. His midsection tightened as if he’d strapped on a corset. An expedition, an abandoned outpost. A captain and two young officers stumbling through a half-contaminated site. Unsecured chemical tanks . . . ruptured, and a lieutenant who forgot to secure the site before clearing the captain through to investigate. Simple procedure, if only the ranch hand from New Mexico had followed it.

  All those years, and here the error came rushing forward to have an effect on today. Keller was trapped between his loyalty to his captain and what might be the right thing to do.

  Around him, the crew stepped over wreckage. Open trunks, strands of insulation, burned carpet, and data-crystal membranes peeled back like banana skins. He squeezed his eyes shut and let the sounds of the bridge ring and jingle through his skull. Peleliu was singing to him. Not as pretty or sleek as a starship, the Chesapeake-class cruiser was an advanced defensive picket ship. A no-frills vessel meant for multiple duties from exploration to medium-range rescue and relay, she had limited lab space and the most utilitarian of quarters. There was hardly any room on board to get away from each other. Their job was to go out to the Sagittarius star cluster, replace the Enterprise, and work toward stabilization of anterior space and opening up the cluster under Federation jurisdictional law. Simple.

  With a captain who might be unstable? Keller found himself his own judge and jury, with no one else to answer to.

  Tim McAddis was watching him. “What is it you’re not telling me?”

  Self-consciousness squeezed a little cough out of Keller. He winced at the knots in his stomach, put up an officer front, and gave McAddis a hopeful nudge. “Pretty perceptive for a late paleolithic hunter-gatherer.”

  Both relief and dread washed over him as he saw Savannah Ring’s chestnut head appear in the lift cavity. She was climbing out, slowly.

  He was glad she was here. A fair number of people in his life circle had earned his trust, but he trusted Savannah Ring most. Stocky and quick, a mix of Polynesian bloods and some Eskimo, with brown eyes and a slick of dark red hair whose color she couldn’t quite decide upon, Ring was smart and maverick. She neither coddled nor balked, and made up methods as she went along. She was heading to Belle Terre on a last-ditch deal with Starfleet—take a discharge or take frontier duty. Follow the rules, or go where there aren’t any.

  Here she was, climbing out of the lift hatch and up the safety cables without anyone’s help. When she stood again on the bridge, her uniform was smudged with blood and grease.

  Keller’s silent eyes probed. He felt them burning in his head like separate beings.

  With a towelette Savannah wiped blood from her hands, then repacked the field kit at her hip, using slow and deliberate movements. Finally she met his eyes. “We’ll take him below later,” she said. “He’s pretty compliant now.”

  At Keller’s side, Tim McAddis covered his face with trembling hands and mumbled unintelligible grieving.

  And Keller stood there, and just stood.

  Hours passed. The enemy had stopped shooting. Maybe they ran away, lost the cruiser in the sensor darkness, ran out of power themselves, or were overwhelmed by the phaser blanket. Nobody knew. Maybe they were still out there.

  Nick Keller sat on one of the crew chairs on the sci-deck. His arms stuck out before him, resting on the balcony rail. His head was lowered almost between them. He stared at the carpet and his two feet, with a hole in his heart the size of his own fist.

  Below, the mutter of reports threaded up from the lower decks, everything from damage assessments to the captain’s relentless efforts to get the phasers on line so he could keep shooting, even though nothing had shot at them for hours now.

  Over the dangerous final hours of Gamma Night, Savannah had floated around the bridge, giving first aid where it was needed, but that was finished now. She’d done all she could, and had retreated up here to the sci-deck, where she had finally done what she’d been called to the bridge about in the first place. She’d checked Keller’s head wound, looked into his eyes and declared them green. Then she, McAddis, and Keller had fallen into a squirming brand of silence that stretched out until nobody dared break it. Long enough for old memories to crawl in.

  Tavola methane. Two shipmates determined not to wreck their captain’s career on a maybe. Swearing to keep silent about the lieutenant’s slip.

  Not reporting Tavola exposure was a Starfleet courtmartial offense, because there was no other way to know, no other way to detect it. Exposure only resulted in pathological change in one of about eighty victims. The symptoms never came up, doctors never said a thing at Lake’s regular physicals. Milk runs in interior space, easy missions, mostly handled by the crew. Until this mission.

  Symptoms never came out. It’s the methane, I know it is. We gambled—we lost. Today we pay.

  Now what? Relieve Lake of command based on an incident that happened three years ago and they couldn’t even prove happened at all? People change with age. Could be just stress.

  Now that he was out of the lift, without Derek Hahn helping him think, making the decisions, suddenly stress could only explain so much.

  A young officer breaks regs to protect his captain. Not the first time.

  Seldom also did such an error result in rolling thunder. This might be the time.

  Somebody was rubbing his back. Savannah or Tim. Might be that Rassua woman, but he had the feeling his skin would be in shreds by now if she were doing it. She didn’t seem like the back-rub type.

  Probably not Savannah. Her bedside manner was more of a slap in the rear than a rub on the back.

  Must be Tim.

  Far as Keller could tell, Roger Lake had buried any feelings about Derek Hahn, had done nothing more than take a silent look down into the lift cavity. Then he put aside any mention of the cloying loss, personal or otherwise. Maybe a good captain did that kind of thing.

  So much for me.

  The hand on his back went away. A squeak on the deck told him McAddis was moving back to the sensors. Keller didn’t raise his head. The science console twittered sluggishly.

  McAddis’s voice startled him a little. “Captain, I’m picking up shadows again on the mid-range.”

  Below, Roger Lake came toward the balcony. “Describe them.”

  “They read generally the same as the ionized clouds we went through a couple of nights ago, except for some flickers of solidity.”

  “Clouds? I don’t believe it.”

  “I could run a comparison, sir,” McAddis offered. “But these readings are . . . real muddy. I don’t think they’ll clear any.”

  Lake turned to the helm. “Thrusters on.”

  Kell
er’s head snapped up. “What’d he say?”

  “One-sixth impulse,” Lake finished. “Steady as she goes. What’s the story on those phasers?”

  As the crew yanked themselves out of all-stop and back into the ugly pattern of before, tension shot out to engulf the bridge again. At the helm, Makarios looked over his shoulder to Keller. The desperation in his face communicated what he dared not say. Beside him, Hurley worked the navigation controls, but there was no way to know where the ship was heading or what might be in their way.

  Moving again—without an order to raise deflector shields.

  “Cripes,” Keller mumbled. “Tim?”

  “I got flickers, Nick,” McAddis quietly said. “Could be the people who attacked us, or just sensor shadows, or it could be nothing. I’m bettin’ on nothing.”

  “But he’s responding to them. It’s enough to keep us moving forward . . . but forward toward what?”

  “He won’t let me scan forward.”

  Dangerous words.

  Usually sublight speed was slow for a deep-space vessel. But under the conditions of Gamma Night, they might as well have been shot out of a supernova. Everybody was nervous, bruised. Savannah had made the rounds, patching injuries and doling out medication, unable to transfer anyone to sickbay.

  The bridge was locked up. The pressure drop on deck four had cut them off. Damage had to be repaired before the hatches would allow themselves to be opened. With the crew severely depleted, there were only so many hands to go around. The broken lift still hung ten feet down the useless tube, with Derek Hahn beginning his eternal walk inside it. Getting people on and off the bridge had become a low priority.

  “He’s got it in his mind there’s a big force tracking us,” Savannah breathed through her lips.

  “He could be right,” Keller reminded. “We don’t know.”

  “In my medical opinion—”

  “You’re not a doctor.”

  Her dark-island eyes stung him. “And you need one?”

  In a fume, Keller snapped, “What if he’s right and there’s somebody behind us?”

  McAddis thrust his opinion in. “If we keep moving during Gamma Night, what’s behind us won’t make any difference.”

  The thought explored its way through Keller’s mind. If they kept moving—what?

  “You better get ready to hold this hot potato.” Wide-eyed, McAddis pressed a warning hand to Keller’s shoulder. “Because, guess what, wrangler . . . you’re the first officer now.”

  Keller’s whole body turned cold, as if there were holes in the bottom of his feet and his blood suddenly drained right out.

  “Great snakes,” he moaned. “We’d be better off flippin’ a coin. . . .”

  “I’ll give you one.” McAddis dug in his trouser pocket and thumbed a shiny coin onto the console’s microfoamed face. “Have a half-dollar.”

  The coin was soft burnished silver or some other white metal, with a gold edge around the outside, struck with a picture of some kind of ship. Keller leaned over it, then finally picked it up and held it so the overhead lighting didn’t obscure the impression.

  “Oh—the early moon shuttle program! Well, isn’t this mighty pretty.”

  “Not moon shuttle,” McAddis corrected. “An ‘orbiter.’ ”

  “They were called ‘shuttles’ though, weren’t they?”

  “I guess, but they never went to the moon. It’s a commemorative coin, struck for the NASA sesquicentennial or something-centennial back when they had a grand opening for the first lunar mall.”

  “Is it silver?”

  “Platinum. Rim’s gold. If you can believe Bonifay.”

  “Zane Bonifay?” Keller held the coin higher and looked at the cluster of rocket-powered contraptions neatly standing on a launch pad. “Orbiter Challenger. These names around the rim . . . who’re they, the crew?”

  “Must be.”

  “Where’d you get a thing like this?”

  “From Bonifay, just before he left for Belle Terre. I won a bet. I had a choice of that one or a Roman emperor. Should’ve picked the Roman one. It would’ve gone with your nose.”

  “Bonifay—you mean that rascal is out at Belle Terre waiting to spring on us?”

  Savannah came up closer and commented, “That brat put a curse on me!”

  “He said it’s for luck,” McAddis said, pointing at the coin. “You need it more than I do. Maybe you can hypnotize the captain and get him to heave to during Gamma Night before we get netted by a nebula.”

  A nostalgic smile tugged at Keller’s sweat-stiffened cheeks. “Those were the days, y’know? Countdowns, blastoffs, whiplash trajectory . . . Mission Control always right there with you on the radio vox . . . must’ve been some time to live, eh? Everything just out of reach enough to keep you scratching forward . . . wish I’d been there.”

  The coin turned in his fingers. The faces of seven people, in three-quarter profile, were etched into the flip side. He didn’t recognize them, or their names.

  What a wondrous time that must have been, those days of early exploration so close to Mother Earth. Just those few miles projected wondrous adventure. Even the planets of the Sol system were sirens in the night. Those stalwart first few men and women were held to Earth only by the thinnest threads, by mere whispers in the darkness.

  He sank against the rolled foam edge of the science console, his imagination clicking, held the coin in his fist, and peered down at the forward screen’s fractured vision.

  “I’ve seen dogs,” he began, “bite at the flanks of sheep in order to herd them in a direction. And dogs are smarter than sheep.” His brow tightened. “What d’you figure the dogs know that the sheep don’t?”

  Though aware of Tim and Savannah gazing at him, both disinclined to comment, he paid them no attention at all. For a few seconds there was only Nick Keller and the blind forward screen in the whole universe. Even Roger Lake faded away for a moment and he forgot all the other forces pressing on him. In his fist, the commemorative coin was warmer than his flesh.

  “Gives me an idea.” Leaning forward again, past McAddis, he touched the comm panel on the science board. “Tracy, Nick.”

  Below, Tracy Chan turned to look up at him, wondering why he didn’t just talk to her over the rail.

  With a motion for her to remain silent, Keller quietly said, “Patch me through to Hurley, very low vox.”

  For a moment, she didn’t understand. Then she did. She touched her controls with subtle gestures, and nodded to him.

  “Joe,” Keller uttered, “it’s Nick. Pretend you’re talking to Makarios.”

  He saw Hurley’s posture change, but no more. The navigator turned slightly toward Makarios at the helm. “Copy that.”

  “Can you read our heading?”

  “Direction, but not clutter. Our best sensors are trained aft.”

  “Deflector reactions? Heat? Fragments? Dust? Radiation on the hull—anything?”

  “You’re asking me to read a book through cheese-cloth. Talk him into slowing down. We’re dead if we keep mov—”

  “Hurley! What’re you whispering about!” Roger Lake’s round face, with its flush of anger and locoweed eyes and a glaze of sweat under the five-o’clock shadow, leveled a glare on the navigator. “If you think you two can conspire on my bridge, you’ve got something coming!”

  “We were just double-checking our readouts, sir,” Hurley covered. His guilty expression didn’t help him. “We have to be careful during Gam—”

  “Don’t believe the instruments! Keep all the sensors trained aft, you understand? This one, and this one! And this one!”

  Lake punched buttons on the helm, forcing the pilots to turn their sensors away from the direction the ship was traveling. What little information they managed to draw in would be useless. Unhappy, he speared his glare up at the sci-deck. “McAddis!”

  “Sir?”

  “You a science officer or a janitor? Keep scanning behind us! You expect Hurley to do your
job for you?”

  “Aye aye,sir. . . .” With a suffering glance to Keller, McAddis shrank to his console.

  “Nick, keep an eye on them up there.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Everything settled to a surreal quiet.

  Hiding her curiosity behind a padd she’d picked up at the environmental station, Savannah moved forward and pretended to be interested in the little screen. She even went to the trouble of pulling out the onboard stylus and pretending to write things. “You’re sweating, Sheriff,” she commented.

  “So are you, tumbleweed.” Keller’s words rumbled in his throat.

  “I like to sweat. Makes me feel alive. At least I don’t look like her.”

  Keller glanced to his right, at Zoa, not really caring anymore whether she saw or heard them talking about her. She either wanted in on the shipboard community or she didn’t, and she apparently didn’t.

  “Don’t pay her any mind,” he said. “We can’t do anything about her.”

  Savannah nailed the Rassua guest with a bitter glower. “She found out about my snakes yesterday. I thought she was just interested. Know what she did? She stole them and beamed them into space.”

  Though he knew she was manipulating him by changing the subject, Keller tried to make his stomach muscles relax. “I know. Derek said there’s some kind of taboo on her planet against reptilians. I don’t think she understands your species.”

  “But what kind of a savage does that?”

  “What kind of a pet is a snake? I mean, a tail with fangs?”

  “They’re silky, they coil around your neck, and you don’t have to worry about any preschool children hanging around for long.”

  “You don’t have a reflection, do you?”

  Nope, changing the subject wasn’t helping.

  “Tim,” he began.

  At the console, McAddis flinched. “Huh?”

  Keller slipped closer to him. “Be real sly about this. Turn your sensors forward. If we’re going to slam into anything, that’s where it’ll be.”

  “But his orders—”

  “Hush.” His finger touched his lips. He pointed at the science boards.