STAR TREK: NEW EARTH - CHALLENGER Page 6

  He plucked the offending candle out from under his leg, picked up the clothespin also, shifted his weight and stood up.

  “Who’re you?” he asked, aware that he probably presented a monolith of reputation to the ensign.

  The black-haired kid blinked up with sore eyes. “Ens . . . Zzz . . . Bah-hanonifay . . .”

  “What’s your duty here?”

  “Secure the processed ore for shipment . . . I inspect, seal, catalogue, and authorize . . .”

  “Very well, on your feet. Pull yourself together. You lived.” With a first grasp on the wrist, Kirk hoisted him up.

  The ensign coughed and spat dust. “How could it—eat that much!”

  “We’re not sure. Spock, is everyone out there all right?”

  Spock came to Kirk’s side, still scanning the scene of the crime, and nodded away the question. “Obviously some sort of transcendental portal,” he postulated, voicing his thought process still in action.

  Kirk huffed a frustrated sigh, then looked down and lifted one boot. “Why’s there melted wax on the floor?”

  “Where’d that thing come from?” Bonifay belched. “How’d it—how could it—where—”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  Inside the deathly darkened bunker, a weak rose-colored haze was thrown by tiny worklights along the far edge of the floor. Emergency lights on the black-painted planks illuminated scratches from loading pallets. The junior officers were little more than wraiths hovering about.

  There were the big crewman and the security officer, outside the bunker door, brace-legged and caked with ice-dust, looking like a couple of abominable snowsicles with just their eyes blinking on and off in shock. Alive, anyway, not sucked into that thing.

  Accepting the reality quickly and already thinking about alternatives, Kirk indulged his curiosity. He fingered the gold fringe on the kid’s shoulders, a shawl or scarf of some exotic fabric, tied into a sailor’s knot in front. “Ensign, are you out of uniform?”

  The young man’s expressive eyes worked. “Oh . . . It’s ceremonial, sir.”

  “You look like a yenta. And these?” He held up the candle and the wooden peg.

  “Time-tested charms, sir.”

  “Is something on fire in here? Or are you cooking?”

  “Oh, that’s just some incense, sir. And bay leaves.”

  “You had open flame inside a containment bunker?”

  The ensign steeled himself, but already didn’t seem to like his own answer. “Candle . . . the shadow had to fall across . . . there had to be a forty-degree . . . em . . . it’s hard to explain.”

  Not that he didn’t believe whatever he was talking about. He just didn’t like telling it to Kirk.

  All right. Change the subject. Let him off the hook.

  “Why weren’t those processed pellets inside a forcefield?” he charged, even though he knew no forcefield would’ve stopped the ’bot from stealing the lode.

  The ensign didn’t seem to feel quite as guilty as Kirk was fishing for. In fact, he displayed the confidence of someone who knows his job and knows he did it. “We were waiting for the last shipment. It’s been slow going in this precinct. The processing stations are having trouble separating the olivium from a lot of gold and platinum and other trash.”

  “Bonifay!” The muscle mass charged in, flushed and overwhelmed. “Did you conjure up that thing?”

  The ensign waved him down. “Not on purpose.”

  “If my pecs deflate because of your voodoo, I’m coming after you.”

  Now embarrassed in front of Kirk and Spock, the ensign gritted his teeth at his companion. “Shut up, Gyler, or I’ll kill you and make some vain attempt to hide the body.”

  “Who are you two?” Kirk asked, pointing at the muscular one and the security woman as she hesitantly joined them.

  “Phaser Gunner Ted Gyler, sir,” the big kid said.

  “Security Specialist Lucy Quinones, sir. It’s an honor, Captain Kirk.”

  “Thank you. What’s your duty on Belle Terre, Specialist?”

  “I’m finishing a two-year hitch, sir.” The hard-shelled Quinones deposited her phaser into the pressure-molded Security Division chest shield that dominated her upper body. “I’m planning to go into Commander Giotto’s Planetary Law Enforcement Agency. With my service record, I’ll go in as a precinct deputy.”

  “There isn’t any Planetary Law Enforcement Agency,” Bonifay countered.

  “There will be,” Quinones reacted.

  Gyler held up a little vial in his gorilla fingers. “Here’s your little momento, jerk.”

  Bonifay rolled his eyes. “It’s memento. From memory. ‘Momento’ goes with ‘mo-ron.’ I’ll take charge of that.”

  “What’s that?” Kirk asked. “Water?”

  “Glycerin, sir,” Bonifay answered. What choice did he have? “Symbolizes tears of yearning. Canonizes the long-lost homeland.”

  “Whose?”

  “His people,” Quinones said unrevealingly.

  “What people?”

  Quinones faced Bonifay. “Spanish, right?”

  “Some.”

  “Greek? Italian? Jewish? Come on, give!”

  Kirk snapped his fingers and pointed at Bonifay. “I remember you now! Two weeks ago, cargo dock sixteen. You told one of my delivery yeomen you were a quarter Klingon.”

  “I sensed Klingon blood in him, sir. I assimilated.”

  “That was no Klingon!” Quinones snarled.

  Bonifay’s charcoal-mark brows and bedroom eyes crawled into an expression. “He had Klingon in his heart. I flowed with it.”

  Pulling out his flameproof cosmopolitanism, Spock commented, “Humanity prides itself upon being a melting pot, Ensign.”

  Despite his embarrassment, Bonifay raised his chin. “We’re in the pot, sir, but we refuse to melt.”

  Kirk eyed him. “You’d better explain that one.”

  Gyler pointed at Bonifay. “He wanted to get on your good side. He was casting a spell.”

  “Why do you want to be on my good side?”

  “He wants a transfer off Belle Terre.”

  Bonifay’s tan flushed pink. “Have I got a voice? Can I speak for myself?”

  Kirk pressed down a smile. “Yes, you may.”

  “I have the right to remain silent.”

  “Mmm. Well said.”

  Did everybody want to get off Belle Terre?

  Maybe. Somehow these young people, with their bits of contention and odd desperate measures, were a microcosm of the strange effect this planet seemed to be having on people. Something about the frontier of Belle Terre, the pressure of olivium possession and the prospect of losing it all, was driving both citizens and uniformed personnel to bizarre actions. Industrious, desperate, confused, trying to find ballast in an inclement storm. Amazed by the wide variety of methods people had of solving their problems, Kirk shook his head and turned to gaze out onto the open prairie, half expecting the drumstick to come back.

  “Spock,” he began, “that probe . . . it only measured about two meters at its longest, correct?”

  “One meter, nineteen centimeters, at an estimate,” Spock offered.

  “Yet we hit it with phaser rifles at full charge and it didn’t even heat up.”

  Fluidly Spock moved closer. His clear enunciation and something about the deep timbre of his voice commanded absolute attention. “Not only that, Captain, but my tricorder registered a density flux. The probe registered a few hundred kilograms to a few hundred million kilograms.”

  The ink-slash brows went up to make his point.

  “Impossible,” Kirk gruffed.

  Spock held out the tricorder before him.

  Kirk’s aching hazel eyes crimped. “Then where’s the energy transferring to? And where’d the olivium go?”

  “No idea. Physical laws cannot change, yet for some reason, they are not applying. However,” Spock said, shifting his weight and tipping his head, “I also note a purely mechanic
al behavior. There were no life signs. Its actions were clinically simple, suggesting computer-based steps of progress. With that level of complex energy absorption and transmutational power, we don’t know how much more aggressive it’s capable of becoming if we stand in the way of its programming.”

  “You’re saying, if it shows up again, we shouldn’t make it mad.”

  “Phasers obviously have no effect.” Spock looked down at his rifle. “Thus we should refrain from provoking the probe until we discover something that does have an effect.”

  Troubled, Kirk finally allowed himself to accept that they’d failed again despite a masterful effort and a good thought forward. It was annoying to admit. “We’ve got to keep this from happening again, Spock. Belle Terre’s future depends on the olivium now. The whole Federation too. If we let it fall into someone else’s hands in these kinds of quantities . . .” He paused, sought an end to his sentence, then dismissed the complex possibilities and simply finished, “I just don’t trust anyone else.”

  “On the Enterprise,” Spock offered, “I will be able to analyze the tricorder’s readings more thoroughly. Perhaps find a theory.”

  He seemed dissatisfied that he couldn’t provide all the answers. Bonifay was watching him, catching subtle communication that Kirk usually kept private between the two. This kid wasn’t missing anything.

  “I’m counting on that,” Kirk said, both kindly and sternly, and turned to the ensign. “What’s your name again?”

  The kid opened his mouth, but the sound stuck in the bottom of his throat.

  “Bosun Zane Bonifay, sir,” Spock smoothly provided. “Lately of the CST Beowulf, reassigned to planetary cataloging and loading of the olivium consignments to Enterprise after the wreckage of Beowulf.”

  “Oh, yes.” Kirk let the harsh edge pass from his voice in lieu of sympathy. “Sorry, Ensign. A spacefarer should be in space. Unfortunately,” he continued as he handed his phaser rifle to Quinones, “we all have to serve triple duty here now.”

  Zane Bonifay shook his head clear of the cobwebs and tried to deal with one thought at a time. “That thing sure was happy. . . .”

  “Happy?” Instantly Kirk picked up on the odd comment. “How do you know it was happy?”

  Bonifay frowned. “You heard it singing, sir . . . didn’t you?”

  Kirk looked at Spock. “I thought that was just engine noise. Did you pick up feelings?”

  “I failed to register any subjective emotion,” Spock said, “but Mr. Bonifay’s observation should be noted.”

  “All right, it’s noted. We still have to do something about this. There has to be some way to isolate the olivium from whoever’s got the nerve to confiscate it in these kinds of quanities. That was enough to fill a quarter of Enterprise’s hold capacity. We can’t have this, Spock, we just can’t have it.”

  A few steps away now, Bonifay halfheartedly offered, “I could try to transfer a shipment directly from one of the processing operations. I know you want the Enterprise filled to capacity before you leave . . . there’s another silo on this island—”

  “Enterprise isn’t leaving as planned, bosun.” Sparing him any illusions, Kirk explained, “We’re staying to work this out. Small doses of olivium have been disappearing from installations all over the planet. We thought it was being raided by people here, but obviously, since we just witnessed the impossible, there’s something much bigger going on. This is the first time a major quantity’s been hijacked.”

  That figured, didn’t it?

  A few steps away, Lucy Quinones grimaced in empathy for Bonifay, but what could anyone say?

  “We need a plan of action,” Kirk went on, but now he was speaking to Spock, who stood in elegant repose very near him. “The colonists are up in arms.”

  “Pointless,” Spock mentioned, “since weapons are apparently ineffective against these raiders.”

  “And they may get hurt trying to defend the mines and storage facilities. We’ll have to take over planetary security.” Kirk’s brows came down on his plans.

  Spock, toneless, said, “Governor Pardonnet will resist.”

  “I know. I would too, if I were in his shoes, but I’m not. Have Starfleet guards take over every installation and recovery operation. Advise them to abstain from confronting these things and keep the colonists from confronting them. Have them log all contacts for activity and duration, then report all findings back to you for analysis. And Spock . . .”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “These things seem to be happening at sources of large quantities of olivium that have already been mined. We’ll split up what we’ve got into smaller increments and stop mining the rest. We’ll decentralize the ore and store it in much smaller quantities, spread out farther from each other, until we clear this up.”

  Spock digested that, then reminded, “The governor will be unhappy about shutting down the first major planetary operation to recover from the Kauld’s nano-machine attack.”

  “Well,” Kirk grumbled, “Evan Pardonnet’s always unhappy about something and happy about something else. If I were clairvoyant, I could tell you which way he’ll go. When McCoy gets back from globetrotting all over this planet, I’ll have him nail Pardonnet with a calm-down shot.”

  “The governor’s concern is justified, Captain, as the advocate of the private sector. These people have waited more than five years to establish—”

  “They’ll wait longer,” Kirk snapped.

  Spock had hit the wrong cord with that one.

  “Sir?” Bonifay surprised himself by squawking through his dust-coated throat. That’s it, stick your head into the grinder.

  “Yes?”

  “We should . . . why don’t you try—well, I’m a bosun . . .”

  “You’re a bosun, yes?”

  Forcing the idea lingering in his head to actually form into words, the impetuous Bonifay coughed up a dustball and continued. “We should store small quantities of olivium in different kinds of containers and see if the things can find them. Maybe there’s something inert that could hide it. Polymer or paraffin . . .” He threw in a last shrug. “Maybe they can’t see though lead.”

  Spock skewered him with a glare. “Most logical,” the Vulcan congratulated, his voice actually lilting.

  His own eyes twinkling, Kirk pointed at Bonifay, but looked at Spock. “Do that. And put Mr. Bonifay here in charge.”

  That done, he suddenly just wanted to get out of here. He moved out until the doorway of the bunker framed his form. The cold wind plucked at his sandy hair and swirled around his boots. He peered upward, threatening and thoughtful, into the darkened sky of this alien world that had seemed so beckoning yet had provided nothing but trial since Humanity arrived here. When he spoke, the level of conviction was as compact and clear as his skyward glare.

  “Somebody’s stealing a priceless cache of the Federation’s future. I mean to reclaim it.”

  Though he started to walk out, Kirk now paused. He turned to Bonifay one more time.

  “You stood your ground,” he sanctioned.

  Bonifay straightened up some, and met the captain’s gaze. “Maybe I froze, sir.”

  There was a touch of insubordination in there somehow. Bonifay felt it pop out, on a little skid of resentment. He expected Kirk to snap him down, but Kirk liked the sliver of defiance. He shifted from one foot to the other.

  “Sometimes they’re the same, ensign. Carry on.”

  He turned away, toward Spock’s calm gaze. Shoulder to shoulder they stepped out of the bunker.

  As Kirk and Spock headed back to their hoversleds, Quinones and Gyler wandered in a daze to Zane Bonifay’s side. They seemed not to know what to say to him. He saw that in their eyes, sensed it in the way they were breathing. All his hopes had been pinned on this last few minutes, and been dashed to bits.

  “Stuck here,” Bonifay muttered.

  Quinones ran a raw hand over her ice-flecked face. “Maybe a red candle next time?”

  C
hapter Five

  ROGER LAKE dropped Hurley back into his chair, which fell over and dumped the navigator onto the command deck. Lake stared at the forward screen as it fritzed and fought to clear. He couldn’t change his thoughts from the danger aft to the danger forward fast enough.

  “Roger!” Nick Keller shouted to break the shock in his captain’s face.

  Lake’s jowls shuddered. A droplet of sweat freed itself from the pucker of his chin. The screen-wide glare of the gas giant flung itself back and forth in his eyes and turned his face a pasty blue. “But they’re aft of us. . . .”

  At Keller’s side, the rock of Zoa impulsively came to life with a series of short calculated movements. She plucked the stylus out of Savannah Ring’s hand, and placed it on her forearm, which she raised quickly to chest level. One of the straps on her wrist brace turned out not to be leather at all, but some kind of elastic. She fixed the stylus into the strap, pulled back, and pwinggg—the stylus speared Captain Lake in the back of his right shoulder.

  “Ah!” Lake howled and spun around, clutching at his shoulder, then spun full about again, his face monstrous.

  Keller met Zoa’s eyes for a fleeting instant, then he seized the distraction for what it was.

  “Vector port!” he called. “Hard over!”

  Hurley and Makarios fumbled briefly, but hammered the helm.

  With one hand on the rail and the other holding Savannah by the arm, Keller braced his legs. Under him the Peleliu tilted up on a nacelle and wheeled hard. Ring slipped out of his grip and disappeared behind Zoa. A tangle of arms, legs, and wrecked hardware slammed into Keller’s left side as McAddis lost his balance and brought pieces of the smashed science trunk with him. Together they skidded across the sci-deck and hit the environmental station. Keller’s shoulder and the side of his face smeared across the starboard consoles. McAddis’s bulk pinned them both there, breathless and squashed. Centrifugal force drove them efficiently to helplessness while the ship screamed in their ears, all systems hitting tolerance in only seconds.

  The shields fended off radiation and heat, engines fighting gravitational pull, thrusters ruddering off the deadly course. On the main screen, visible in Keller’s one good eye, the gas giant’s swirling poisonous atmosphere dominated second after second. Ten—fifteen—the ship whined and whined. They’d almost been on top of it, almost incinerated in its thick atmosphere.