STAR TREK: NEW EARTH - CHALLENGER Page 7

  Would Lake take over? Get them out of this? Keller wanted to shout orders, but the idea of two officers giving directions made a horrid vision of good practice simply shredding. This couldn’t go on. The crew would start dividing. Efficiency would shatter. The ship would crack or the crew would.

  Still pinned to the deck, Keller forced his hand into the air and grasped the edge of the engineering console next to where he’d fallen. He raised one boot and thumped the lattice blockade under the sci-deck rail, enough to make a muffled clank.

  “Braking thrusters, boys!”

  Even from up here he caught a flash of Hurley’s face and could see Makarios struggle to stay at the controls and work them.

  Suddenly the whine tapered down. Pressure fell abruptly off and Keller could move again. He was sprawled in his side behind Zoa and Savannah, in the crease between the carpet and the trunks. Beside him lay the lower trunk lid with torn wires and a nozzle dripping the last of its lubricant. Above, over there on the port side, the science opticals showed a blue monster’s swiftly growing distance. He pressed his hands to the carpet and pushed himself halfway up under McAddis’s weight and looked forward.

  “All stop!” Roger Lake called. He was slumped in his command chair like Santa Claus after a long day.

  “All stop,” Hurley rasped. He reached over to tend the helm controls. Makarios was nowhere to be seen.

  “That was close,” Lake huffed, wincing at the stylus that had saved them, still impaled in his shoulder. “We missed the damn thing! That was a hell of a thing . . .” He rubbed his hands and glanced about at the monitors, which did their regular jobs now that sensor blackout had lifted.

  What now? Would he explode that his command had been snatched away?

  Let him.

  Blue eyes crinkled with fear and a million other things, Tim McAddis rolled to his knees and pulled Keller to a sitting position.

  “Nick!” he gasped. “You hurt?”

  Keller touched his reddened jaw. “Carpet burn. Now I’ll get a tan. How about you?”

  “You saved our skins!”

  “Hush.”

  Glancing up at Zoa, who had somehow stayed on her feet, McAddis steadied himself with effort. “I think our lady guest has a crush on you.”

  “Tim, the woman wears a crossbow.” Keller got to his feet and pulled Savannah out from Zoa’s shadow.

  As he straightened, he met Zoa’s blue dots for a moment of bizarre communication. She was proud of herself. How she felt about him and their rash cooperation remained a mystery, but clearly she thought she’d done the rightest thing around by assaulting the captain.

  Assaulting the captain.

  Keller backed away a couple of steps. He hated himself. He thought it was right too.

  On the lower deck, Lake was turning his shoulder to Hurley. “Can you see what pinned me? Pull it out.”

  Tentatively, Hurley glanced at Keller, fumbled briefly, then yanked the offending sticker out of the captain’s flesh.

  Lake peered at the stylus. “How’n hell did that get in me?”

  Hurley mopped his face with a dirty hand. “Must’ve been the ship turning so fast, sir. I don’t know.”

  At Keller’s side McAddis wobbled, but caught himself on the science board. “If the course hadn’t already been locked in—”

  A gesture from Keller cut him off. “I told you to hush.”

  “Look!” Makarios reappeared in front of the helm and shot a finger at the main screen.

  In the deep distance, a small cluster of blips were just now winking out.

  “Who were they!” Lake thundered. “Get a trace on those bandits! Read their emission trail!”

  Pestering an answer out of his banks, McAddis croaked, “Emissions read similar to the bandits who attacked us before, sir.”

  Somehow irritated and also relieved by that, Keller moved to the sci-deck rail. “You were right, Captain. They were behind us.”

  Lake clapped his hands so sharply that sweat sprayed from them. “Hell, you don’t spend twenty-eight years in space without learning a thing or two. Nick!”

  “Yes?”

  “Great job watching our blind side. I can always count on you!”

  “Oh . . . yes you can, sir.”

  Rubbing his receded hairline, Lake clumped to the communications station, where Tracy Chan was readjusting herself after the tumble. “Sure could use a rest. I’m bushed. Can we get somebody up here to clear the tube and companionways? Let me talk to the damage-control chief.”

  His conversation with the lower decks faded as he bent over Chan’s connections.

  Savannah Ring heaved a shuddering sigh. “Be sure to close the coffin lid,” she said, “you saturated headcase.”

  “Secure that,” Keller admonished.

  “Oh, right.” Her eyes flared. “Bad me.”

  As the ice-cube mood on the bridge began to dissolve, Keller turned toward the science station and took a step. His left leg folded under him and he stumbled into McAddis. Pain shot up his thigh and sent him gasping. The deck swam under him.

  McAddis caught him on one side, and Savannah on the other.

  “What is it?” Savannah asked. “Your leg?”

  “I tripped on the ship . . . ’scuse me while I writhe in agony. Done in a minute . . .”

  “Sit here.” McAddis pulled him to the science chair.

  Keller folded into it and gritted his teeth, letting the pain in his knee overtake him. Savannah wrapped her analytical hands around his knee, feeling for whatever medics felt for at a time like this. “Don’t make a fuss,” he warned.

  “You’re just worried Lake’ll make you wear regulation boots if he sees you limping.”

  “What’s wrong with my Durangos? They just prevented a sprained ankle.”

  “Too bad they’re not thigh-high,” McAddis contributed. “Would’ve saved your knee too. I gotta git me some a them someday, Nevada.”

  “And show me up?”

  “Think they were Kauld?” Savannah asked. “Those ships running away?”

  Throat tight, Keller managed, “Like it or not, he was right. Wasn’t just shadows following us. His command instincts are still bankable.”

  “Denial,” Savannah stated. “Seems to me your job description just changed in more ways than one.”

  Irritated, he pushed her hand away. “I’m not leading a mutiny just to please you.”

  He stood up and turned, then stumbled back a step—there was somebody in his way. He found himself beak to beak with the Rassua woman who had haunted the entire voyage like a gargoyle.

  Here she was. Right here. Did she expect a warm thanks or what?

  “Ah—hello,” Keller stammered. “Can we help you?”

  Now that she was standing ten inches in front of him, Zoa didn’t look as monolithic as she had in her perch over there by the end of the rail. In fact, she was noticeably shorter than Keller, though still taller than Savannah and muscular as a bodybuilder. While her body was not a man’s, her torso was thick with mass, her bare shoulders and arms made of glazed knots. Her braided coif fanned around her face. Those heavily lined eyes never blinked.

  Up close now, Keller saw that the bird-wing decorations on her eyes weren’t makeup. They were tattooed on. Her eyelashes were long and severely curled and stuck that way somehow. He got the idea that was permanent too.

  “You are an commander crew officer,” she said, in thickly accented English that forced her to speak slowly. “You will take possession of thy battling-ship.”

  She turned the last phrase into a drumbeat of syllables, and Keller’s problem into a mountain. Nobody else was saying it right out like that.

  Fielding a glance down to the lower deck, hoping the captain hadn’t heard, Keller swallowed a lump. “Ma’am, I can’t do that.”

  Her expression never changed. There wasn’t a flicker of warning, except her left shoulder tilting back like a spring. When it came forward, the rest of her arm launched like a cannon shot. />
  All Keller saw was the brown tips of his boots splaying out in midair. His head hit the rail, and he fell butt-first to the deck with his spine against the rattling lattice.

  Before him—above him—McAddis charged the woman, but was knocked back when she simply raised her hand and knuckled him in the forehead as if flicking a bug. Savannah, standing back by the enviro controls, had the sense not to move against the Rassua.

  McAddis recovered, his face an angry grimace. He snatched up a spot-welder from the deck clutter and swung around to Zoa’s golden face. She turned her head and looked casually at the welder muzzle as if she were about to take a bite out of it.

  “No, Tim!” Keller thrust out a hand. “Stand down!”

  McAddis drew back. He didn’t lower the welder.

  “What’s going on up there?”

  On the lower deck, Lake and the helmsmen and Tracy Chan were all peering up here.

  Keller ignored the pain in his left hip, where he’d collided with the rail, and scrambled to his feet. “Slipped, sir.”

  “Well, be more careful.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Zoa’s blinkless eyes swung back to Keller with icedover passion broiling under the surface.

  “You will,” she proclaimed.

  Having had her say, and still completely unintimidated by McAddis or anyone else, she turned to the steps and descended from the sci-deck. Apparently the command deck wasn’t terrorized enough yet.

  Keller sank back to rest against the rail. “And your little dog, too. . . .”

  If only they weren’t locked together on the bridge. What was taking damage control so long?

  Tim McAddis still had the spot-welder tight in one hand. With the other hand he got a grip on Keller. “Good grief, Nick, I’m sorry! I didn’t even see her move!”

  “What’d she hit me with?”

  “That was her hand. Anything broken?”

  “Just my hopes for galactic peace. . . .”

  Savanah shook her head in disgust. “Ambassador Nick Jacob Keller speaketh.”

  He rubbed his hip and added it to the roster of sore spots. “Heshup . . . I just got a switchin’ from a crocodile in a leather jumpsuit. Gimme a minute.”

  “Let him alone, Ring,” McAddis scolded. “It’s none of your business. You’re not in the crew.”

  She was unthreatened. “We all almost ended up real small and toasty, so shut up. You should’ve hit her back, Nick.”

  “Can’t. UFP wants the Rassua to join up, and the Rassua are interested in the excitement out at Belle Terre. They sent her to have a look at us and the planet. See if we’re good enough for them.”

  “You mean she’s the diplomatic corps?”

  “Yep.”

  McAddis gazed down to the lower deck, where Zoa had taken up position near the forward screen, her back to them as she watched space unfold before the eager sensors. “Wonder what the soldiers are like. . . .”

  Savannah drifted back farther under the ceiling shell that cloaked their words. “If we can stay alive out to Belle Terre, we can put Captain Lake on medical leave and get him some help.”

  “What if he snaps before we get there?” McAddis pointed out.

  “Hush,” Keller groaned. “Both of you . . . hush.”

  He moved away from them, to the back of the sci-deck, as far from them, from the captain, as he could go on a sealed bridge. There, he turned away, faced the chittering environmental opticals, and closed his eyes.

  Lake’s judgments were sluggish, he was making some irrational accusations, motivations were a little twisted . . . but was it enough to declare him unfit for duty? Would the admiralty regard these changes as quirks of command style? Keller would be expected to produce a log of the captain’s erratic behavior. Neither he nor Hahn had kept documentation. The behavior hadn’t shown up until the attack came.

  Or had it? He began to sift back over the past few weeks, over the orders to check the supples, then check them again. The ship’s stores, the manifests, weapons-locker inspections . . . running diagnostics twice, three times per watch, on the same systems, security analyses of crew quarters, assigning crewmen to different departments arbitrarily—

  But there were sensible shipboard reasons to do all those things, especially on a long-range mission. Keller had never been on a long-range with Lake. Maybe this was his long-range command style.

  Had Derek Hahn been suspicious of the curious custodial orders? Keller combed back over the conversations, even momentary exchanges, between himself and the other watch officer over the past months. He found sentences both suspicious and not, in and out of context.

  His head throbbed. The argument kept going inside his head. He shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to flex his shoulders. The carpet blurred as he gazed downward.

  How many more Gamma Nights could they survive if Lake insisted they keep moving? How could he justify taking Roger’s command? Never mind Starfleet—what would the crew think? Dr. Harrison would have to certify a medical report of debility. But there was no trace of Tavola methane. There never would be. Keller and Hahn hadn’t reported it immediately, instantly. Physical evidence went the way of the winds.

  Below, he heard a loud scraping noise, then a clank deep in the bones of the bridge. The damage-control crew must be breaking through to the companionway. Getting the hatches open. Freeing the trapped bridge crew. Next would be the jammed lift. And Derek.

  He could confess on the record. To whom? Himself? Starfleet was months behind them, Captain Kirk weeks ahead. Like it or not, the ranking authority out here in the snowy Yukon was standing right here in a scuffed pair of Durangos.

  Throw the captain in restraints and himself in the brig? Who would that help?

  There were so few situations when mutiny was the right choice . . . in all of history he couldn’t even count ten. What were the odds against Peleliu’s being number eleven?

  Could a man actually blow up and strangle at the same time?

  One pile of manure at a time.

  Inside his pocket, his knuckle bumped the commemorative coin. In his mind, he flipped it.

  “Roger, we need to parlay.”

  “Sure, Nick, come on in. Sit down right there. You did a great job out there, just great. When we lost Dee, I thought we’d have ourselves a mess without an experienced exec, but you stepped right up and showed me I can depend on you. A captain without a good first officer, he’s got the whole galaxy on his neck. I know it’s a big bite for you to swallow. Field promotion from lieutenant commander to commander—that doesn’t happen to everybody.”

  “It won’t stick,” Keller reminded as he came into the dimly lit captain’s quarters. “HQ’ll rescind it and replace me with a qualified exec once we reach Belle Terre. Captain Kirk’ll handle it. He’s got a starship full of people with ten times my experience. The sooner, the better, for me.”

  Lake looked at him. “But you’re headed for command, Nick, someday. And you can depend on me for support when that day comes. Sit down. I want you to review this tape.”

  “Sir?”

  “They did a hell of a thing out at Belle Terre. This is Captain Spock’s Quake Moon report on telemetry. It’s the damndest thing.”

  His computer terminal, keyed to command encryption, displayed several security protocols before clearing the portrait of one of Starfleet’s most valuable assets—Spock of the Enterprise. The Vulcan’s archetypal features possessed an unexpected ease of being, not like a lot of Vulcans Keller had met. He wasn’t stiff or arrogant at all. Everyone Keller’s age had grown up with the stirring tales of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, two men who had opened up the reaches of the galaxy, and who were now doing it again. Surprise made Keller miss the first few words spoken by Mr. Spock’s historic baritone voice, one of the few voices of household familiarity Federation-wide.

  “. . . initial readings indicated that the moon was hollow. It was not. The material inside was simply not read by conventional instrumentation. Sinc
e we often do not see what we’re not looking for, instruments and probes saw only the volcanic moon, but not the slight shifts in mass. The body read as volcanic with a hollow core, which of course made no sense.”

  “Captain,” Keller interrupted quietly, “we really need to talk. Can we listen to this later?”

  “Shh! This is the good part.”

  “Only later analysis at close range,” Spock went on, “revealed a cascading effect. The more the moon heated up, the more the olivium went in and out of flux, creating more friction and thus more heat.”

  “I know the feeling,” Keller blistered.

  “By the time the colonial expedition arrived at Belle Terre, the moon’s flux was actually visible from the planet’s surface.”

  Keller fell suddenly silent as a blue planet rolled by on the screen. Belle Terre. So that’s what it looked like. It really was a second Earth. Dawning over an ocean was a surging black and red moon, its surface scored from beneath by fissures pulsing a strange neon white.

  Keller shivered at the raw natural force that would soon be in his life. “Look at that thing boil. . . .”

  Mr. Spock’s voice continued to explain while a free-floating satellite toured the surface of the hostile moon.

  “The moon’s history involved an asymptotic curve, bumping along for uncounted centuries at the bottom of the curve. For thousands of years, the flux was only a small vibration. Our early probes and scouts missed it completely. Then it reached its vector and suddenly spiked upward, paralleling the vertical line but never quite reaching it. Friction reached the moon’s point of tolerance. The olivium was in constant quantum flux, causing exceptional heat. The more it flowed in and out of existence, the less accurate our predictions became. After millennia of housing the olivium successfully, the moon was about to destroy itself. Only a safety-valve release would keep the moon from destroying Belle Terre as a livable planet.”

  Vulcan or not, Spock’s delivery was anything but stoic. Keller heard the tenor of concern, fascination, and worry. This plainly meant a lot to him. Spock paused as the camera continued its tour of the angry moon.