STAR TREK®: NEW EARTH - THIN AIR Read online

  Tegan wasn’t sure the olivium was removed, from what she knew about the properties of the ore. She doubted very much if the ward’s shielding could protect her son and the other four from the subspace problems of the olivium. But she was willing to be wrong, as long as her son didn’t get any worse in the test.

  “Let me show you to your quarters,” Captain Skaerbaek said, easing her by the elbow away from Charles’s bed. The other family members had all beamed down to the surface a short time before. She was the only one who had asked to stay aboard.

  Tegan let the tall captain pull her away. As Dr. Akins had said, there was nothing she could do at the moment. But she could get ready for the next possible step. If this shielding didn’t help Charles and the others, then she was determined to get them out of the system and away from any possible subspace emissions from the olivium ore.

  And to do that, she needed to start understanding what was possibly available in the way of ships. Even if the governor wouldn’t assign a ship to take them to safety, she was sure she could find one. And the best place to look was in orbit.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Tegan said as she walked beside him out of the ward and down a long, wide hallway. Everything was hospital white, and felt as if it should be bustling with activity. At the moment ghosts would be more at home walking this hospital hallway.

  “You’re more than welcome,” the captain said. “And please, call me Bill. It’s wonderful to have some people back on board again. I just wish it could be for different reasons.”

  “Healing my son is a very good reason,” Tegan said, smiling up at the captain.

  He laughed with her. “Putting it that way, you are very right. I hope this works.”

  “So do we all,” Tegan said.

  “Trust Dr. Akins,” the captain said. “He’s one of best there is.”

  “Where is everyone?” she asked. “Don’t you have a full crew of Starfleet personnel?”

  “Twenty-six of us full-time Starfleet doctors, engineers, and orderlies came along. The rest of the crew on the way here were colonists. Until we get ready to leave, most of my Starfleet crew rotates to the surface. At any one point there are usually only six of us on board.”

  “Wow,” Tegan said, “this monster ship must really feel empty with only six crew.”

  “Very empty,” the captain said, nodding. “I’ve heard echoes that should never be heard on a spaceship.”

  She laughed. She liked this man. Anyone who could make her laugh when Charles was sick was someone special. Maybe with a little luck, and some time, he might help her find a solution. “You live on the surface as well?”

  “Nope,” he said. “My first officer and I are always on board.”

  “Starfleet regulations?”

  He laughed. “No, just good common sense.” He stopped and pointed into an open door. “Here you are. Just a quick walk from your son.”

  She glanced inside the spacious quarters. Her luggage had been placed just inside the door. Compared with her and Charles’s room on the way here from the Federation, this was massive. It looked even bigger than their house on the planet’s surface. “Wow, who lived here?”

  “Actually,” the captain said, “Dr. Ellay, chief surgeon for the colony, stayed here with his wife and three children. Biggest suite on the ship.”

  “And your quarters?” she asked.

  “Up two decks,” he said, pointing toward a nearby lift. “And nowhere near as big. Would you like to join me and my first officer for dinner?”

  Tegan glanced up at the warm smile of the captain. “I’d love to. Do I have time to change and check on Charles first?”

  “More than enough time,” he said. “I’ll stop by here in one hour. How does that sound?”

  “Perfect,” she said. “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Bill,” he said, smiling. “And the pleasure is all mine.”

  “Bill,” she said, smiling back at him. “One hour.”

  She stepped inside as the captain turned away.

  The door slid closed behind her and she was alone in the biggest stateroom she’d ever seen. She walked over and looked into the main bedroom, marveling at the size. She could imagine rooms like this on yachts, but not on Starfleet ships.

  After a quick walk-through of the suite, she started to unpack. So far everything was perfect. Charles was getting the best medical help available, and the captain was a pleasant man who she had a feeling she was going to enjoy spending time with.

  With luck, Dr. Akins would be right and the shielding would be enough for Charles to get better. And if that was the case, they could live right here until this ship, along with the other ships, headed back to the Federation. She was sure they would take her and Charles along.

  But just in case the shielding didn’t work for Charles, she was going to make sure Captain Bill Skaerbaek was completely and totally on her side.

  Chapter Four

  YANORADA WATCHED the information pouring across the three screens in front of him. The Blind had started and, just as it had done for months now, the information poured in over the tight-beam lasers to his computers, where it was unscrambled and fed across the screens in front of him.

  At the moment he just wanted to clap his hands like a happy child. He had over a hundred sensors planted in different locations and soils of Belle Terre, all collecting data during the time between Blinds. Then, with the laser system focused directly at his asteroid a few moments before the interference of the Blind started, he was able to get all the gathered information when there was no chance of detection.

  This time every sensor on Belle Terre showed evidence of the siliconic gel formation. Two areas, both near where parts of the warship had survived all the way to the surface, were about ready to explode. And when that happened, it would be enjoyable watching the humans scramble for safety like ants from a disturbed anthill. He wished that for that event he could be in low orbit. It wasn’t possible, but he could dream.

  Once an area of siliconic gel started, it would be like a hole in a dam sprewing water at an extreme pressure. Only it wouldn’t be water spewing from the hole, but siliconic gel, an invisible, suffocating layer covering everything. Nothing would be able to block it, and the very existence of the siliconic gel flowing from the area would trigger other areas into increased siliconic gel production. Once a single location broke lose, it would be less than three days before the entire planet was covered in the siliconic gel.

  And Vellyngaith and the others had laughed at his plan. They had thought the humans would be easy to kill, but he knew better. And he had been proven right so far. The others were no longer laughing, from his reports from home. Now they were simply waiting. And from the looks of the data flowing across the screens in front of him, they were only waiting to welcome him home as a hero.

  He would be known as the Kauld who had defeated the humans without firing a single shot.

  He turned to Relaagith, his number one assistant, who was monitoring data collected from the humans over the last “day” period. “Any sign the humans are aware of what is happening?”

  Relaagith turned and shook his head, smiling. “Nothing at all. They only worry about their crops, without discovering why the plants are dying. Humans truly are stupid.”

  “And from my calculations,” Ayaricon, his second assistant, said, “the first major siliconic gel eruption will occur near one of their main colonies in less than thirty of their hours. It will overwhelm the entire colony to a height taller than the largest trees within one hour of starting.”

  “So by the next Blind, it will have finally started,” Relaagith said. “Is it possible to have a ship within range to record the event?”

  “Patience,” Yanorada said, going back to studying the data as they flowed past his eyes. “We have waited this long. There is no point in taking any chances now. Besides, we are the only ones who know how to stop the siliconic gel. We will stay safely hidden here until it is finished and every human is
either dead, or leaving the system.”

  “Of course,” Relaagith said. “But it is only natural to want to watch the results of our hard work.”

  “Oh, we’ll watch the results,” Yanorada said, smiling, “from the central position of the parade they will give in our honor for killing all the humans.”

  Both Relaagith and Ayaricon laughed at that wonderful thought.

  Kirk stood in the lift, not-so-patiently waiting for it to deliver him to the right deck. He had hated Gamma Night from the first moment they had entered this area of space, and he hated it even more now, after all this time. For ten hours out of every thirty, the Enterprise and all the other ships in the area were frozen in space, not daring to move. Ten long hours of being basically blind and deaf to anything happening around his ship. Not even Spock, after months of trying, had been able to figure out anything that would really help the situation much at all. Sensors just didn’t work very well.

  So every twenty hours communications and movement in this area of space came to a halt, and they just sat and waited, as they were doing now. Kirk hated that more than anything. Most of the Gamma Nights over the last month he had tried to be on the surface, with Lilian Coates, or doing something to keep his mind off the helplessness of it all. But this time he didn’t dare leave the ship or get sleep. And he couldn’t even check to see if Lilian was all right. He just hoped her entire town was preparing to evacuate. From what Spock had said, right near her was the highest concentration of the siliconic gel polymers in the soil.

  The lift came to a smooth halt and he strode off down the hallway, ignoring everyone he passed. At the moment he was just too angry to even try to be friendly. Spock had done a complete analysis of the Kauld battleship that had exploded months before in the upper atmosphere. The ship had been full of hundreds of billions of self-replicating nanoassemblers. By the Enterprise doing what seemed to be the right thing and blowing the Kauld warship apart, they had simply released the nanoassemblers to float on the upper atmosphere, setting to work forming siliconic gel when they came into contact with the right substances.

  He had been a Kauld pawn and they had played him perfectly. Kirk hated to be played with. It made him angry.

  Gamma Night made him angry.

  Being faced with a situation that was going to destroy something he had worked hard to build was making him even angrier. He and Spock and the scientists on the surface had the ten hours of Gamma Night to figure out a way to save the colony, save Belle Terre, and pay the Kauld back. And pay them back he would do.

  During the time right before Gamma Night had set in, thirty soil samples from different areas of Belle Terre had been delivered to the Enterprise. Spock had set up a temporary lab in a mess area and filled it with what equipment he could find.

  As Kirk entered the makeshift lab, he could smell sulfur and the faint odor of oranges. The soil samples were in open containers on a counter, looking more like bombs to Kirk than anything else. Spock was bent over a counter, looking into a scientific scope of some sort while at the same time typing in numbers on a keypad.

  “Any luck, Mr. Spock?”

  Spock glanced up. “I am endeavoring to keep luck out of this process, Captain.”

  “Results, Spock?” Kirk asked, forcing himself to take a deep breath. “What results have you gotten?”

  “A number of smaller findings,” Spock said, turning away from the scope and clicking on a monitor. He motioned for Kirk to look.

  An image of the land surface of Belle Terre appeared. Kirk was more than familiar with it after all this time. The larger continent had been hit extremely hard during the explosion of the moon. Some of the colonists had decided to move back to that area anyway, while others picked the less damaged, but smaller, island chain on the other side of the planet.

  The largest of those islands was where the main colony headquarters had relocated, and where Lilian and Reynold lived.

  Spock indicated the screen. “The red shows the highest, and most dangerous, areas of siliconic gel polymer concentrations in the surface soil. Using the samples, I’ve extrapolated this map from wind and soil conditions.”

  The main colony island was a bright red. Kirk couldn’t take his eyes away from it. It was as if the entire island were painted with blood.

  “The blue indicates the safest areas,” Spock said. “I was able to get this information to Governor Pardonnet before the onset of Gamma Night.”

  Kirk nodded. “How much time do the red areas have? The main colony area?”

  “Less than twenty-four hours,” Spock said.

  “And then what will happen exactly?” Kirk asked. “If we can’t stop it.”

  “Captain, it is already happening,” Spock said. “The siliconic gel is forming in all of these soil samples.”

  Kirk glanced at the beakers sitting on the tables. “I don’t follow you.”

  Spock moved over to one of the beakers. “Put your hand in the soil.”

  Kirk hesitated. He’d seen what a soil sample explosion had done to the science lab. He wasn’t really that thrilled to have his hand at the explosion point.

  Then with a look at his science officer’s calm, passionless face, he put his hand down into the soft, cold soil.

  “Feel the soil give and seem to shrink under your touch?” Spock asked.

  Kirk nodded. It was a very weird sensation. It was as if he could take a handful of soil, move it around, and it would become less than a handful. “That’s very strange, Spock. What’s happening?”

  “You are breaking down the siliconic gel molecules by simply moving the soil,” Spock said.

  Kirk pulled his hand out of the soil and grabbed a towel off the counter to wipe his hand off. “So you are saying that the volume in each of these beakers is increasing as we speak?”

  “In essence, yes,” Spock said. “Simply put, smaller, more compact molecules are being replaced by air-gel molecules, which are very expansive in nature. The mass isn’t expanding, but the volume needed to contain the same amount of mass is.”

  “I’m still not completely following you,” Kirk said. “What’s going to happen within twenty-four hours on the main colony island?”

  “The top six inches in soil over the entire area will have expanded to a height of twenty feet, Captain. It will be a clear, brittle layer that will push the breathable air above it, but no one will be able to walk on the new substance; thus any creature left on the surface and not protected will suffocate.”

  The thought of Lilian and Reynold, surrounded by a clear, brittle substance, choking for air, made Kirk shiver.

  “No explosion, then?” Kirk asked, trying to clear the images out of his mind.

  “There will be many explosions,” Spock said, “as some stimulus triggers a sudden expansion of the siliconic gel, as happened in the lab. However, without such stimulus, the siliconic gel polymers are expanding geometrically.”

  Spock pointed at the soil sample Kirk had put his hand into. “If left alone, that single sample would expand to fill this room. It will take forty-six hours to fill the beaker it is in. Only twenty more minutes after that to fill the entire room.”

  “What can we do to stop this?” Kirk asked, now finally understanding exactly what was going to happen.

  “There are two logical ways of approaching this problem,” Spock said. “We either stop the nanoassemblers from multiplying and creating new siliconic gel polymers, or we find a way to break down the siliconic gel as it is created.”

  Kirk looked at his first officer. If he was understanding what Spock was saying, even if they could find a way to stop the nanoassemblers, there was another problem. “We have to do either solution on a planet-wide scale, don’t we?”

  “Exactly,” Spock said. “The Kauld had the time and natural winds of the planet to spread the assemblers. We do not have such a luxury.”

  Kirk glanced back at the screen showing the red-covered island where the largest colony settlement was.

 
“So what do we do to stop it, Spock?”

  “I do not know, Captain.”

  That just wasn’t the answer he wanted to improve his mood.

  Lilian Coates stood with her back against the wall in the large assembly hall and listened to Governor Pardonnet say the words she never thought she would have to listen to again.

  “Prepare to evacuate.”

  The idea just made her head swim. This was her home, her planet. How could she and everyone else just be told they had to leave? She wished it weren’t Gamma Night, so Jim could explain what was happening. Governor Pardonnet sure wasn’t having much luck at it.

  She fanned herself, trying to stay cool. The room’s environmental controls couldn’t handle this many people being crammed into the one space. Just weren’t designed for it.

  She could tell from the reactions of others in the main room that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand what Pardonnet was trying to say. She wasn’t even sure if Pardonnet himself did. Their young, energetic governor was looking older and very tired.

  “Look,” Pardonnet shouted as fifty people tried to ask him questions at once, “I don’t know most of the answers. All I know is that everyone on this island needs to be ready to evacuate the moment Gamma Night lifts. We’ll move to the south to start with. If no solution has been discovered in a few days, we’ll have to go back to the Conestogas.”

  “Governor,” one man down front shouted, “you know those ships have been cannibalized for supplies.”

  Lilian shoved herself away from the wall. “What?”

  She wasn’t the only one around the room that didn’t know that piece of information. A lot of people started shouting at once.

  “We’re dealing with that at the moment,” Pardonnet said, holding his hands up to get people to calm down. “Just get ready. Meeting adjourned.”

  Instantly the room’s noise level increased by a hundredfold as everyone turned to talk to the person beside them. Lilian didn’t feel much like talking, so she just ducked out the door and headed into the warm sun toward her home. Even in the sunlight, it was cooler than inside. And the air was much fresher.