STAR TREK®: NEW EARTH - THIN AIR Read online

  Pardonnet looked at the captain, not saying anything. His gaze locked with Kirk’s and the two stood for a moment; then Kirk started to understand, slowly, without a word being said.

  “But that’s not possible, is it?” Kirk said softly.

  “What? Why not?” McCoy asked, glancing between the two of them.

  “You authorized it, didn’t you, Governor?” Kirk said, his words low and cold.

  Pardonnet turned to McCoy, who was standing near him at the rail. “We’ve been cannibalizing the Conestogas for supplies and equipment on the surface, as well as parts for the ore ships.”

  “Dammit,” Kirk said, turning away.

  “None of them are operational?” McCoy asked, his anger clearly right on the surface as he stepped closer. “Where do you intend to put all those people?”

  Pardonnet could only stand there and say nothing. There was nothing to be said.

  “It would seem,” Spock said after a moment of silence, “that finding a way to stop this siliconic gel has become critical.”

  McCoy glared at the science officer. “Sometimes, Spock, your ability to state the obvious astounds me.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Spock said.

  Pardonnet simply stared at the image of Belle Terre filling the lower corner of the main screen, its white clouds and oceans looking serene and peaceful. But it didn’t seem that anything about this planet was peaceful.

  The Kauld observation station hung in the blackness of space, just inside the Belle Terre system’s Oort cloud. It was a hollowed-out asteroid itself, with no distinguishing markings on the outside to give it away. All energy signatures inside were blocked by heavy screening. To any passing ship, it was simply another asteroid to be avoided.

  The observation post had only three full-time inhabitants, and a ship hadn’t stopped at the station in over a month. Yanorada, the mind behind the coming destruction of Belle Terre, sat in a large comfortable chair in front of three large screens, thinking. At the moment all three screens were blank.

  The other two Kauld with him were his two assistants, Relaagith and Ayaricon. The three of them were the only ones living on the asteroid. They had had no contact with Kauld now for almost two months.

  Relaagith had just finished some minor repairs on the data-recording system when Ayaricon brought the three of them lunch.

  “Just over one hour until the Blind,” Ayaricon said, placing the food on a small table in the center of the room. “Yanorada, sir, you need to eat for energy.”

  Yanorada nodded, staring at the blank screens. The Blind, or Gamma Night, as the humans called it, would soon be on them all. The Blind, caused by two nearby orbiting neutron stars, blocked all forms of sensor and communications for ten hours of every thirty. During those hours the information from Belle Terre would flow to them on tight-focused lasers, cutting through the Blind interference on a preprogrammed targeting system. It was only during the Blind that he could be sure no one would discover where they were, so that was the only time he could find out what was happening on Belle Terre.

  The other twenty hours they spent waiting and studying the data sent them. So far, the attack was going as he had planned. Months earlier, he had sent a stripped-down Kauld warship on a suicide mission to Belle Terre loaded with the microscopic agents that would start the siliconic gel formation in the top inches of Belle Terre’s soil. Captain Kirk and his ship had done as expected, destroying the warship in the upper atmosphere of Belle Terre, insuring the wide spread of the formation agents. Soon their precious colony would be a lifeless hunk of rock and the humans would be dead and gone. And then he would be the hero of his people.

  He would have done what Vellyngaith and his warships and his stupid laser beam could not do. He would have destroyed the human colony.

  He stood and moved to the food, making himself take a small portion, then returning to his chair. The last report had the siliconic gel forming nicely in most areas of the planet. He was so excited to see the new reports coming in shortly, he could barely force himself to eat. Two, maybe three more Blinds and his mission would be over and he could leave this hellish observation rock and return home as a hero.

  Humans dead. Success. It was going to be wonderful to return home and look into the eyes of Vellyngaith and just smile.

  Kirk turned to stare at Governor Pardonnet.

  “And you knew this was happening?” McCoy demanded, before Kirk could say anything. It seemed that McCoy was even angrier than he was.

  “Some of it I ordered,” Pardonnet said, not looking into Kirk’s or McCoy’s gaze. “And I knew more was being done than I had given permission for. It wasn’t too hard to notice equipment appearing on the surface that wasn’t in any of the original supply lists.”

  Kirk nodded. Now that he thought back about it, he’d been curious a few times as well about certain equipment. But he hadn’t cared enough to stop and put the pieces together. And now that he was calming down, he wondered if he would have even halted the scavenging if he had known about it.

  “What were you thinking?” McCoy asked, clearly angry.

  “These people have no intention of returning to Federation space, Doctor,” Pardonnet said, now facing McCoy. “This is their home. Why keep a fleet of ships sitting uselessly in orbit when the parts and equipment would be helpful in starting the new settlements?”

  “Because the ships may be needed,” Bones said, stepping closer to the governor.

  “When you were growing up on Earth, Doctor,” Pardonnet said, not backing down from McCoy, “were there enough ships in orbit to evacuate your entire planet?”

  “Of course not,” Bones said, disgusted. “But Earth wasn’t a colony.”

  “And this siliconic gel would be doing the same thing there as well as here,” Pardonnet said.

  “Okay,” Kirk said, motioning for Bones to back off, “we know the situation and it can’t be changed. Yelling about it isn’t going to help. We work with what we have. Now we need to find some answers. Understood?”

  Both men nodded and said nothing, so Kirk turned to his science officer. “Spock? Anything new?”

  Spock turned from his station, the cut on his forehead looking sore and angry. “Possibly, Captain. I’ve managed to download my findings from before the explosion in the science lab.” He nodded at the main screen.

  An image of a complex molecular structure appeared there, spinning slowly so that it could be studied from all sides. To Kirk’s untrained eye, it looked like nothing he’d ever seen before. The molecules were organized in a thin, lattice-like structure.

  “This is what we are up against, Captain,” Spock said. “The basic structure of the siliconic gel being formed in the soil. If this was a naturally occurring gel, it would be possible to synthesize a catalyst that would release the bonds between the molecules, allowing them to return to a normal shape and configuration.”

  Kirk stared at the screen, studying what he saw like he would study an enemy ship. “But I assume this isn’t natural occurrence?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Spock said. “Something is artificially creating these polymers, Captain, and the links between the molecules are stronger than anything I’ve ever seen before. A catalyst, if wrongly applied, would release energy instead of breaking the polymer down.”

  Kirk studied the image on the screen. How could something so simple be so deadly?

  “Is that what caused the explosion in the lab?” Pardonnet asked.

  Spock shook his head. “No, Governor. That explosion was caused by the almost instantaneous formation of billions of what you see on the screen. Such a reaction is typical for siliconic gel construction.”

  “Typical?” Pardonnet asked, puzzled. “Natural siliconic gel can explode as it did in your lab?”

  Spock nodded. “Yes, it can, but it never exists in quantity. But I am more concerned about the solution after it is formed. Tearing apart of this siliconic gel, if done incorrectly, would release energy on a nuclear level. The
result would be an explosion far more powerful than what happened in the lab.”

  There was a stunned silence on the bridge as they tried to soak in that information. Kirk started to pace near his command chair, two steps over, two back. Sometimes that helped him think.

  “Back up for a second, Spock,” McCoy said. “Are you saying that something is building these polymers?”

  “Creating the base polymers in the soils that then leads to the formation of the siliconic gel, Doctor,” Spock said. “It would be the only logical explanation. But I’m going to have to wait for more soil samples to find out exactly what is causing this unusual activity.”

  “Speculate, Spock,” Kirk said, stopping his pacing at the rail and staring intently at his first officer. “What is the most logical possibility?”

  “Nanoassemblers, sir,” Spock said. “Self-replicating. In essence, a mechanical virus spreading planetwide in the soil. A secondary option might be an artificial chemical reaction of some type. It would also spread in the same fashion.”

  “You mean this is an attack?” McCoy asked, clearly stunned.

  Kirk had already come to the same conclusion, and he was betting on the Kauld being the ones doing the attacking. As Spock would say, it was the only logical conclusion.

  “Basically, yes,” Spock said.

  “How long has this been going on?” Pardonnet asked.

  “Speculation, again?” Spock asked.

  Kirk nodded for his science officer to go ahead. Spock’s speculations usually were better than many people’s facts.

  “From the rate of spread around the planet,” Spock said, “from the extent of the siliconic gel creation in certain soils, using a standard rate of this kind of construction, and studying a few external factors, I would say it has been going on for three months, six days, twelve hours, and eighteen minutes.”

  Kirk looked at his science officer, completely stunned. Spock just stood there, his normal calm expression on his face, as if it was completely normal to speculate so precisely. But not even Spock’s normal speculations were that accurate. There had to be something more Spock wasn’t yet revealing that he knew.

  “Now, that’s some guess,” McCoy said. “Remind me to take you to the Kentucky Derby some time. Bet you could guess the winner.”

  “Explain how you came to such an exact conclusion, Mr. Spock,” Kirk ordered, ignoring McCoy.

  “Yeah, tell us, Spock,” Bones said, still laughing to himself.

  “Using the basics I mentioned as to the spread of the siliconic gel, and the standard rate of construction of such a substance, I concluded the time that such a process started would be in the area of three to four months ago.”

  Kirk nodded. That sounded right to him as well.

  Spock went on. “Using the theory of this event being artificially created, I studied the time period indicated for events that could possibly be related.”

  “The laser attack?” Kirk asked. “Nothing hit the surface of the planet during that.”

  “No,” Spock said, then he faced McCoy. “Doctor, do you remember when Lilian Coates’s child, Reynold, became sick after diving for what he thought was a meteorite?”

  “Of course I do,” Bones said. “What would that have to do with this?

  Kirk also remembered the event clearly. McCoy had found nothing wrong with Reynold, and they had found nothing dangerous in the lake. But since he’d been spending time with both Lilian and Reynold lately, he’d often worried that whatever had caused Reynold to become sick might return again.

  “That event could possibly tie it all together, Doctor,” Spock said, pointing at the main screen. The image of the molecule disappeared to be replaced by a Kauld battle cruiser coming in at full speed toward Belle Terre.

  “The suicide attack,” McCoy said. “The day Reynold got sick near the lake.”

  “What suicide attack?” Pardonnet demanded.

  “Just before we discovered the Kauld plan to destroy Belle Terre with a giant laser beam, a Kauld warship ran a suicide mission at Belle Terre. Nothing seemed to be related to it.”

  Pardonnet nodded. “Oh, right, I remember that. From the planet’s point of view, Captain, it’s hard to tell a suicide attack from any other.”

  The screen showed the Enterprise blowing the Kauld battleship out of space, just in the upper regions of the atmosphere. At the time the entire event had seemed very strange to Kirk, but then, with the discovery of the Kauld laser attack, the suicide attack had become forgotten before it could be investigated further.

  Maybe, if the Kauld hadn’t attacked with the laser, they would have discovered this attack in time to stop it.

  Spock froze the image of the exploding Kauld battleship. “Captain, assuming that either of my assumptions, of nanoassemblers or a chemical agent, is correct, they did fire a weapon. The ship itself was the weapon and we were the planned detonating agent.”

  “We just didn’t know it,” McCoy said softly.

  Kirk nodded. Now the suicide run of that Kauld warship was making sense.

  “Spock,” McCoy asked, “wouldn’t the explosion of the ship have destroyed the nanomachines, or the chemical?”

  “I am only speculating at the moment, Doctor,” Spock said. “But I do not think so.”

  “Continue speculating, Spock,” Kirk said, staring at the frozen image of the exploding battleship.

  “From the location of the Kauld ship’s destruction,” Spock said, “and considering prevailing conditions at the time in the upper atmosphere, the agents released by the Kauld would have spread over the entire globe. Where this ship exploded was in a perfect location for such spread.”

  “Planned very well, it would seem,” Pardonnet said, the tone of disgust in his voice clear.

  “More than likely,” Spock said. “However, the atmospheric conditions, added with any remains of the ship that reached the surface, would create areas of higher concentrations of the chemical or nanoassemblers. The soil sample that exploded in the lab was taken near where Reynold Coates became sick.”

  “The meteorite that hit that lake was part of the Kauld ship?” Kirk asked.

  Suddenly that event made sense as well. No wonder Reynold hadn’t gotten sick again.

  “Possibly,” Spock said. “Again, I am only speculating at the moment. And the reason Reynold got sick could possibly have been simply lack of oxygen from being covered in the assemblers as they formed siliconic gel polymers around him.”

  “That would be consistent with his symptoms at the time,” McCoy said. “No wonder he recovered so quickly.”

  “Keep working at it, Mr. Spock. I want to know the instant your speculations become fact.”

  “Understood,” Spock said.

  Kirk dropped down into his chair and stared at the frozen image of the Kauld battleship. The Kauld had not only had the plan of firing the laser, but just in case that didn’t work, which luckily it hadn’t, they had this backup plan. When were the Kauld ever going to leave Belle Terre alone?

  “Captain,” Pardonnet said, stepping down beside Kirk’s chair. “What do we do next? Gamma Night is coming on quickly.”

  With one last look at the image of the exploding Kauld battleship, Kirk turned around. “Uhura, clear the screen. Standard image.”

  “Yes, sir,” Uhura said.

  Kirk looked up into Pardonnet’s worried face. “Governor, what we’re going to do is pull you and your people out of the fire one more time. I want all your scientists working to find out what is causing this, and sharing their information with Spock on a continuous basis.”

  “Understood,” Pardonnet said.

  “I want you and your people to find and take back to the Conestogas all the environmental equipment and kitchen equipment, then start stocking the ships in preparation for an evacuation. Work with Chief Engineer Scott on the rebuilding.”

  Pardonnet nodded, not happy with the idea of evacuating all the people again.

  Kirk turned away from the gove
rnor. “Spock, can you supply the governor with maps of areas of least concentration of siliconic gel formation? We can buy some time by evacuating the most dangerous areas.”

  “Governor, you will have it as soon as the soil samples are gathered and studied,” Spock said. “The process is already under way.”

  “You all right with that?” Kirk asked Pardonnet.

  Pardonnet nodded. “Better to move to other areas of the planet than evacuate, Captain.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Kirk said. “Get everyone working and keep me informed. I’ll do the same for you.”

  Pardonnet took a deep breath and smiled. “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Don’t thank me just yet,” Kirk said.

  The governor nodded and headed for the door as Kirk stared at the beautiful image of Belle Terre below him. They’d almost lost this planet twice before. Why was he afraid that the third time was going to be the one they couldn’t stop?

  Tegan Welch stood beside her son’s bed on the main medical ward of the Brother’s Keeper. The room smelled musty and very unused. There were over a hundred beds, divided by small walls that could be pulled out or retracted for privacy needs. At the moment all were retracted, all the beds made neatly, and only the five beds near the main door were now occupied. Clearly there hadn’t been any patients here for months.

  Captain Skaerbaek, a tall, thin man with a full mustache and thinning hair, stood beside her. He wore his white Starfleet medical uniform with ease, as if it belonged on him. He had alive, green eyes and a smile that came easily.

  At the moment Dr. Akins had Charles and the other four patients sleeping soundly. And an orderly was stationed nearby in case any of them needed anything. The doctor had told her and the rest of the families that the medical ward was shielded as well as anything could be. But he was certain it would take some time before they might see any change in the patients. Being in a deep allergic shock to olivium ore was not going to pass quickly, even when the olivium was removed from the equation.