STAR TREK - TOS - 94 - New Earth - Challenger

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s

imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or

dead, is entirely coincidental.

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DIANE CAREY

NEW EARTH CONCEPT BY DIANE CAREY AND JOHN ORDOVER

POCKET BOOKS

New York London Toronto Sydney Singapore Belle Terre

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Epilogue

Epilogue Two

Look for STAR TREK fiction from Pocket Books

“KIRK HERE. WHAT’S GOING ON?”

“Bridge, sir—hull breach on deck eight.”

“Alert security and damage-control teams. Get visual confirmation. Clear those areas and seal those

breaches.”

“Aye, sir!”

“I’m heading to deck eight.” Kirk bolted toward the turbolift at the far end of the shuttlebay.

Spock didn’t wait. He crossed to the shipboard terminals and cued up the graphics of ship’s integrity.

Even he couldn’t contain a reaction as the graphics showed him what was happening. Across the bay he

called, “Rupture now on deck nine, Captain!”

Boots skidding under him, Kirk spun around. “Are you sure?”

“Another one . . . deck ten,” Spock called. “And deck eleven . . .”

This novel, our 41st, is dedicated to

Barc Lavengood and Dan Thorsby

of “Tullamore Dew”

to Mary, Cathy, Keith and all our friends

at the Rathskeller,

where much of this book was written.

What else can we say, but . . .

“McINTYRE!”

Chapter One

“HOW COULDthreat vessels get so close without tripping our sensors?”

“What do you expect from me? Look at the monitors. Completely gamma-seized.”

“Then we better saddle up and learn to ride blind.”

The sci-deck of Starfleet CruiserPeleliu stank and smoldered. Part of the carpet was on fire, but

nobody was bothering with it. Hot damage crawled like parasites through the mechanics under the sensor

boards’ tripolymer skin. Burst connections caused tiny volcanoes of acid in ripped-open sheeting. A third

of the pressure pads and readouts had quit working or were crying for damage control.

Nick Keller swiped his uniform’s dirty sleeve across his forehead, bent over the sensor boards, and tried

to focus his stinging eyes. A fleck of insulation hung from a wing of his briar-patch-brown hair and

blocked part of his view. For an hour they’d fielded attacks from enemies they couldn’t see, couldn’t

target, and hadn’t expected. How had any hostiles known they were on their way out to Belle Terre? Or

was this some new enemy that nobody in Starfleet or out at the colony even knew about yet?

The question went unanswered. Sensors couldn’t see through the bath of gamma radiation spewed by a

pulsing neutron star so far away that even working longrange sensors wouldn’t have picked it up.

Beside him, Tim McAddis dribbled sweat from his pale forehead onto the sensor dials. His blond hair

glistened with a frost of perspiration. “I’m used to seeing things a solar system away, not a lousy five

hundred yards. Now that our deflectors are on full, we can’t even pick up phantom data like before.”

It was a hard thing for a science officer to admit.

Keller pressed a hand to McAddis’s hunched shoulder. “Look at the bright side. You’ll get the blame

instead of me.”

McAddis grinned nervously. “The mighty second mate stands defiant.”

A knock on the cold-molded lattice grid near his knee got Keller’s attention. He found the first officer’s

reassuring face peering up from the command deck seven feet below, through the lattice fence that

prevented crewmen or tools from falling under the sci-deck rail. “What’ve you two got up there? How’d

they come up on us?”

Without a good explanation, Keller knelt to meet him under the rail and handed over the unhelpful truth.

“Derek, they must’ve cruised in cold. No engines. Coasting, like the old days of rocketry. We were

looking for exhaust signatures, not solid objects. All I can figure is the bad guys are accustomed to

blackout action and know how to maneuver on inertia. Without engines, they’re really invisible.”

“Mr. Hahn,” the communications officer interrupted, “sickbay reports thirty casualties.”

“How many dead?” Derek Hahn asked.

“They just said casualties. I don’t think they want to tell us.”

Kneeling up here in only a pretense of seclusion, Keller gripped the rail at the tremor in Tracy Chan’s

voice. Everybody was shaken badly. They weren’t even sure yet how many of their shipmates were

dead. Suj Sanjai at tactical had been killed in the first hit less than an hour ago. That grim hello had

brought in critical seconds of attack before thePeleliu got its shields up. Since then, the minutes had been

long and bitter, landing percussion after percussion on them from unseen foes who understood better than

Starfleet how to fight during Gamma Night.

“Phasers direct aft,” the captain ordered. “Fire!”

Both Keller and Hahn looked at the command deck.

Staccato phaser fire spewed from the aft array, at targets no one could see, jolting the ship much more

than normal. That was the damage speaking. The cruiser convulsed under Keller’s knee.

Keeping his voice low, he murmured, “What’s he targeting? He can’t possibly know where they are.”

Hahn shook his head, but said nothing. He watched Captain Roger Lake, stalking the center deck.

From up here on the half-circle balcony, Keller clearly saw the command arena below except for the

turbolift. The science and engineering balcony where he knelt rested on top of the lift’s tube structure, a

design meant to maximize use of the cruiser’s support skeleton. Two narrow sets of ladder steps, one to

his left and the other to his right, curved down to the command deck on either side of the lift doors.

Below, Crewman Makarios at the helm and Ensign Hurley at nav both hunched over their controls,

staring at the main viewscreen, which stubbornly showed them only a static field interrupted every twenty

seconds or so by a grainy flash of open space, fed by McAddis’s tedious attempts to clear the sensors.

The largest screen on the bridge—on any Starfleet bridge—was their window to eternity. The two

fellows at the helm were hoping for a lucky glimpse of the attackers, maybe get off a clean shot with full

phasers.

To port of the helm the half-demolished tactical station was still unmanned, with Captain Lake’s stocky

form haunting it as he tried to keep one eye on the main screen. Why hadn’t he called for somebody to

replace Sanjai? Why was he so moody?

To starboard, Chan’s communications console was the only board on the bridge that had so far evaded

damage, either direct or repercussive. Everybody else was struggling just to make things work at half

capacity. Those first hits had done some nasty work.

Up here the engineering console on the balcony’s starboard side beeped madly, reporting dozens of

damaged sites all over the ship, but there was no one to answer. The engineers had split for their own

section as soon as the attack came, and behind him the environmental and life-support board went

wanting too. Keller and McAddis were up here alone.

Almost alone.

The sci-deck offered a certain amount of privacy. Sound insulation and clever design of the ceiling shell

prevented travel of much conversation from up here to the lower deck, where command conversations

were also taking place. The two sections, then, could be functionally close, but not interrupt each other.

Usually, Keller liked it up here. This was second-officer territory if ever there had been any. During this

voyage, though, an added presence haunted the upper deck.

He glanced to his right.

There she was. That Rassua woman, Zoa, along for the haul. A cross between an ambassador and an

inspector, she wasn’t in Starfleet, but she was here most of the time anyway, fulfilling her mission of

“determining whether the Federation is up the standards of the Rassua.”

She stood on the upper deck as if someone had leaned an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus against the

console, both legs braced, her gold face and thick hair in a waterfall of severe skinny plaits, her lined lips

giving nothing away. In the months of travel, Keller had only heard her voice a couple of times. If she was

any indication, the Rassua weren’t talkative.

Dressed in woven strips of leather that left her heavily tattooed shoulders bare, Zoa was markedly

disparate from the Starfleet crew in their black trousers and brick-red jackets. If only she had boots on.

Instead, she wore only some kind of crisscross thong sandals with thick soles, allowing her two-inch

toenails to curve down like a hawk’s talons hooked over a branch.

And she never moved her face. Her blue-dot eyes followed the crew action here and below. It was like

having a sphinx watch every move they made. Keller wished he could order her off the bridge. Roger

Lake wanted her here. He liked showing off to an alien who was being courted by the Federation. The

UFP wanted the Rassua alliance to guard their zenith borders.

So here she was, observing. If they got out of this, she’d have a real story for somebody back home.

Keller had hoped she’d get the hint and go below when the battle started, but apparently this was what

she’d been waiting for all along and she wasn’t about to leave. He tried to ignore her. His skull throbbed.

Derek Hahn reached up and caught Keller’s wrist. “You okay? Your left eye’s dilating.”

His swollen temple ached under Keller’s probing fingers. “Feel like I got mule-kicked.”

“You got ship-kicked. For a minute there I didn’t think we’d come out of that spin. Harrison’s hands are

full in sickbay, but I’ll have Ring come up here.”

“No, don’t. Savannah’s a passenger this trip. She shouldn’t have to be on the bridge.”

“Won’t hurt a Starfleet medic to work her passage. She wants to start a Special Services Rescue Unit at

Belle Terre, she can start right here.”

“Were you a drill sergeant in a previous life?”

“Everybody needs a hobby.” Hahn looked under the sci-deck balcony toward the communications post.

“Tracy, call Savannah Ring to the bridge with her bag of tricks.”

“Aye, sir. Medic Ring, report to the bridge with a field kit. Medic Ring to the bridge, please.”

“Nick!” McAddis erupted from the science board. “I’m getting a shadow! I think they’re coming in

again!”

Without even attempting to confirm the readings, Keller glanced at the stocky form of their captain,

pacing the lower deck between the helm and the command chair. “Tell him, Derek.”

Accepting Keller’s instincts, Hahn spun around. “Captain, brace for another pass!”

On the command deck, Captain Roger Lake didn’t order the crew to brace or any other preventive

action. Instead he made a completely unexplained order. “Thrusters on! One-eighth impulse power!”

Hahn stepped away from the rail and croaked, “Sir, we shouldn’t be moving during Gamma Night!”

Lake shot him a glare. “We’ve got to outrun them while we can. I know how these people think.”

Keller pushed to his feet and spoke up, “Sir, I agree with Derek. One full-power hit fromPeleliu would

demolish any ship in this sector. They don’t have anything that can match—”

“They’ve got everything we’ve got. Fire!”

Lake’s eyes were fixed on the forward screen, as if he saw something there. But there was nothing. Only

a clicking blue cloud of static. Yet he was shooting, over and over, depleting their weapons, sending

unthinkable destructive power racing through space behind them without effect.

Hahn came back to the rail and peered up at McAddis’s scanners. “If only we could go to warp speed .

. .”

Gamma Night laughed in his face.

Hahn turned to watch Lake from behind, analyzing the set of the captain’s shoulders, the quick

breathing, the cranky movements, the petulant glances. “We’re dead if we keep moving.” He jumped to

the nearest ladder, climbed it, and joined Keller at the suffering sensors. His voice was very low. “He’s

snapping, Nick.”

Cold dread washed down Keller’s spine. He glanced to his side, afraid the science officer had

overheard, but McAddis had moved down the sensor bank and was preoccupied.

Keller’s hands turned icy. “Now, let’s not pick our peaches before they’re fuzzy.”

“We gambled,” Hahn said. “We lost.”

“We don’t know that yet, Dee,” Keller downplayed.

“His judgments are sluggish, he’s irrational—this stuff about how they’ve got everything we’ve

got—who does he think is out there?”

Desperate to hold together whatever they had, Keller resisted the urge to face him and obviously be

having a conversation that might get the captain’s attention. Quietly he said, “Harrison did a psych scan

two weeks ago for chemical abnormalities. The results were indeterminate. This is just stress. He hasn’t

been in battle for years.”

“Neither have I, but I’m not—”

“Hey, I’ve got blips on the short-range,” McAddis interrupted. “I think they might be moving away!”

Keller spoke past Hahn. “Captain, they might be moving off.”

“If we hold off on weapons fire,” Hahn added, “they might lose us. Sir!”

“Don’t believe the equipment!” Lake whirled around, meeting everyone’s eyes one by one. “They’ve

done something to our sensors! Sabotage. We have to rely on instinct. We know they always attack in a

wedge formation. Like bees.”

At that, Hahn stepped forward. “Captain, how can you recognize something we’ve never encountered

before?”

“Don’t joke around, Dee,” Lake said. “It’s typical Klingon formation. Hurley, did I tell you to stop

shooting?”

Beside Keller, McAddis bent forward as if he’d gotten a cramp.“Klingons.”

“Shh. Anybody can misspeak. He means Kauld.”

But he peered past Hahn, down to the command area. A few steps to their right, the Rassua woman

now had her inkdot eyes fixed not on Lake, but on Keller and Hahn. Gold face, a zillion little braids, and

eyes with no pupils, just solid blue, grilling them with an angry message.

This could get out of hand. Turning away from her, Keller pressed a couple of fingers gingerly to his

aching head and used the other hand to play the suffering sensors, but he overturned the dial and lost the

image.

McAddis nudged him. “All right, Nick?”

Beside them, Hahn complained, “What’s taking Ring so long?”

Keller waved them off. “Swamped in sickbay. I’ll just put a patch over the dilated one. You can call me

the Santa Fe Bandito.”

McAddis smiled, then murmured, “I’d feel better ifshe just wasn’t here all the time.”

“Captain likes having her here, watching,” Hahn reminded, almost casting a glance back at Zoa, then

changing his mind at the last second. “Her people have a taste for frontier living. They weren’t interested

in the UFP before Belle Terre broke wide open.”

“Funny,” Keller commented. “Nobody wanted to go out there when it was peaceful and pretty. Now

hell’s broke loose, they discovered stable olivium, and all bets are off.”

Uneasy, McAddis sighed. “Those colonists are in for a shock with people like the Rassua prowling

around.”

Keller peered at the reflection of Zoa’s stiff face in the polished rim of the number-two scanner. “Naw,

she’s just going out there to open a young ladies’ academy. Zoa’s Charm School and Small Engine

Repair.”

Though he managed to get chuckles out of the two other men, that was all the relief they would get. On

the engineering console, across the sci-deck from where the three men huddled, the severe-malfunction

lights came on with a corresponding alarm. An instant later, half the board exploded in what was

obviously not another hit, but internal damage finally blowing.

While Hahn pulled the leather-strapped presence of Zoa out of the way, Keller stumbled to the

unmanned engineering console and tried to make sense of the flashing and smoldering. “Tetragrid

overload! We need an engineer on the bridge to lock down the static pulses!”

“I’ll do it,” Hahn volunteered. He skimmed down the ladder, dropped to the lower deck, and crossed to

the tactical boards.

Keller fought to tie his controls in to the tactical, racing the damage before it caused a calamity.

“Starboard PTCs read amber!”

“Leave ’em alone!” Hahn turned briefly toward aft to make sure he was heard over the mechanical

whine. “Cool those plasma injectors right now! Try the—”

The ship slammed sideways, driving Keller first backward, and then elbow-first into the environmental

grids. The enemy had found them again and struck them in the main section’s port side, hitting the skin of

the cruiser mere feet from the bridge. A tumor of smoke and shrapnel burst out of the tactical displays.

The blast swallowed Derek Hahn completely. The last thing Keller saw of him was the wedge of his chin

as the explosion struck him in the back.

“Oh, cripe—!” Keller was down the steps before he realized he was on his feet.

“Out of the way!” Roger Lake shoved Helmsman Makarios right out of his seat and plowed to Hahn.

He and Keller met at the first officer’s writhing form. Lake pulled from one side, and Keller caught Hahn

as they rolled him over.

Hahn’s uniform was actually sizzling in Keller’s hands, but the exo was conscious, talking, and trying to

stand.

“I’m all right,” Hahn gasped. “The injectors—”

“Pick him up.” Lake pushed off the deck and veered back to the helm. “Blanket the phasers! Set up a

grid and open fire!”

“Our weapons are depleting,” Keller reminded, but it was like talking to a tree. “Blanketing shots

without a target just wastes power!”

Derek Hahn reached out. “Roger!”

The captain didn’t honor them with a response, turning instead to the frightened helm crew. “Ahead,

quarter impulse!”

“Oh, no—” Hahn pressed a hand to Keller’s knee and forced himself to his feet.

When Hahn stood up, Keller was choked by a heart-clutching sight of Hahn’s uniform and the three

inches of metal sticking out of the first officer’s back on the right side, an unidentified piece of the blown

board material.

Three inches out—how far in?

STAR TREK - TOS - 94 - New Earth - Challenger

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