STAR TREK - TOS - 78 - The Rings of Tautee

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STAR TREK

THE RINGS OF TAUTEE

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn

Rusch Look for STAR TREK Fiction from

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star Trek

THE RINGS OF TAUTEE

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn

Rusch

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THE RINGS OF TAUTEE

Chapter One

THE GAS GIANT THESAU, the ninth planet

out from the star Tautee, expanded, then

contracted, as if it were cookie dough in the hands

of a huge, unseen child.

Egg-shaped.

Then round.

Then oblong.

The large planet went through wild

contortions as it fought to somehow retain its shape.

And for a moment it seemed to have won the fight,

settling into the round, swirling clouded shape it had

had for millions of years.

Then the unseen child started pulling on it again and the

gas giant expanded at its poles, then flattened

almost as fast.

Every video screen throughout the entire

system 1

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn

Rusch

was focused on those images. Millions of

Tauteean people watched, awestruck at the incredible

forces at work.

Half a kilometer below the surface of the

second moon of the fifth planet, the entire staff

of the Kanst Energy Center[*thorngg'thousands of

researchers and scientists[*thorngg'watched their

screens in growing dismay. Some people turned away.

Others sat on regulation chairs, no longer able

to stand. The remaining few stared at the screens as if

the sight betrayed them.

In the center of the fifty-thousand-kilometer

building, Subcommander Prescott stood in the

middle of the war room, watching the screens. Her

assistant Folle stood beside her. The rest of the

room was empty. No one else cared to see

destruction in three dimensions.

The war room was a round amphitheater, and she

stood at the focal point, in the bottom, below all

the workbenches, the computers, and the seats. The circular

screens showed her the Tautee system as if she were

on a ship in space. The system surrounded her and

covered the ceiling above her. Only the shiny steel

floor, which reflected the images in a blurry,

colorful fashion, showed that she was in the middle of

her creation.

The Kanst Energy Experiment.

She had hoped to provide unlimited power for

all her people. The studies had taken most of her

life. The research built on research that built

on research, some of it generations old. She had

hired ten thousand of the best minds in the system to 2

THE RINGS OF TAUTEE

work on the project. Their analysis, the

computer charts, and the projections all showed

success.

How could it have gone this wrong?

"It's going to break up," Folle said. "Just like

Hancee did."

Hancee, the moon where the energy

experiment had taken place. Where she had lost

three hundred of the best minds in the system.

Prescott shook her head, the movement

making her head ache. Pain shot through her jaw.

She was grinding her teeth again. She had shattered a

tooth when Hancee broke up, but her pain had

seemed minor then compared with the loss of a moon and her

people. Her friends.

Her pain felt even more minor now.

The amphitheater was strangely silent. She

couldn't even hear the hum of the computers. The air was

cold[*thorngg'the center fought a constant battle

to keep the temperature steady within such a large

space[*thorngg'and she wore only her thin lab

uniform. Somewhere she had lost the extra sweater she

kept for the cold days, the days when the cold ate through

her thin skin, all the way to her bones.

That didn't matter either. She had a feeling she

would lose more than a sweater before the week was out.

The gas giant's shape changes took place

in that silence. She almost expected to hear

rips and tears as the planet changed shape. The

sounds of an earthquake, maybe, the grinding of

shifting rock under the unseen forces.

The silence was eerie.

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn

Rusch

But the silence was better than the cries of dismay

she had heard two days ago, when this room had been

full of her staff, when all the scientists had

gathered to watch their success on Hancee.

A success that had quickly turned into a disaster of

untold proportions.

Hancee had been the largest moon orbiting the gas

giant. Two days after they started the experiment

inside Hancee, something had gone wrong. Nobody

knew exactly what had

happened. The project was generating the

expected power, and the transmission beam was being

put on line to bring the power into the population.

Suddenly the three hundred men and women on

Hancee no longer communicated with the Kanst

Cente r[*thorngg'or with anywhere else in the

Tautee system. They were just gone, along with the power

beam and the laboratories there.

Orbital photos showed nothing. The

base was obscured by clouds of debris or gas.

At least, her scientists thought it was debris or

gas. It could have been anything, or something new

created by the experiment. She had no way of knowing for

sure.

She still didn't.

Two frantic days later, the rescue mission

based out of the seventh planet finally received clearance

to head for Hancee. It would have taken almost a week

to get there, but the ships were still on the launchpad when the

entire moon broke apart, scattering itself in small

pieces in an expanding ring around the gas giant.

Now, less than a week later, the gas giant

THE RINGS OF TAUTEE

shattering, torn apart by forces she couldn't even

imagine.

Prescott glanced over at Folle's strained

and tired face. Somewhere in the last two days, he

had stopped touching her, even casually, a squeeze

of the shoulder, a brush on the wrist, all those soft

unconscious signs of support. The others

refused to meet her eyes, but the loss of

Folle's trust hurt even more. He was her right

hand, her best friend, her second-in-command,

and her sometime lover.

And he blamed her for all of this.

Underneath it all, so did she.

Not only was she legally

responsible[*thorngg'she set up the center, the

team, and the research, and convinced the government the

project would work[*thorn] but she was morally

responsible. She had believed in the project with

all her might.

But no one could blame her for silencing the

doomsayers. There had been none. Everyone thought the

project would work.

Even Folle.

Prescott, her thin, tiny frame showing the wear

of the last week, sank down into a chair and closed

her eyes.

She had to think.

She so much wanted to believe that something else besides

the project had caused this

destruction, that some cosmic coincidence had led

to this.

She might be able to make herself believe that the

small forces they had been working with could destroy a

moon. That remote

possibility was the very reason the experiment

had been placed so far out, away from the populated

center of the system. 5

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn

Rusch

But the energy project couldn't have come close

to generating even one-millionth of the force needed to tear

apart a gas giant almost as big as their sun.

She hadn't caused this. She repeated the sen-

tence over and over again. She hadn't caused this.

She hadn't caused this. It just wasn't possible.

But something was tearing apart the biggest planet in their

solar system. And the destruction of the moon was damning

evidence that her project had triggered something.

What, she had no idea.

"You'd better watch this," Folle said.

She opened her eyes.

Folle was looking forward, at Thesau. The

orange-and-yellow clouded planet filled the

front screen. It seemed to have a large bubble forming

on one side. As she watched, the

bubble moved away from the center of the

planet, pulling more and more of Thesau with it.

She stood. "This just can't be happening," she said

to herself.

Folle placed his hand over hers.

She glanced at him in surprise. His anger

seemed to be gone, replaced by resignation. He

knew, as well as she did, what the bubble meant.

Strangely, it was his touch, his acceptance of the

crisis, that nearly cracked her resolve. It was

easier for her to watch when he blamed her. She could

close it off, observe as a scientist instead of as

a person.

Then he slipped his arm around her,

strengthening her. She put her arm around him, hoping

to give him strength in return. They would need it.

THE RINGS OF TAUTEE

Because this was just the beginning. She knew that now. For the

next hour they watched as the largest planet in their

solar system spread out like jam on bread, forming the

beginning of a huge ring that would someday, years and years

in the future, fill the entire orbit around the

sun. The birth of the first Ring of Tautee. There were

fourteen more planets. There

would be fourteen more rings.

Chapter Two

Captain's log, Stardate 3871.6

The Enterprise has been ordered to the

Tautee system to investigate waves of

subspace interference coming from the

area. Long-range scans have shown that

some, if not all, of the planets of the

Tautee system have broken apart. Admiral

Hoffman believes that the Klingons might

be involved in the system's destruction,

although she doesn't rule out other

causes. The Tautee system fails under the

area covered by the Organian Peace

Treaty, and the Klingons are looking for

almost any reason to move into the

disputed area. We have also heard

rumors of the Klingons developing a new

superweapon. My personal hope is that

these rumors are false.

We have one other concern. A team

surveyed the 8

THE RINGS OF TAUTEE

Tautee system ten years ago, and found a

spacetraveling pre-warp culture

insufficiently developed to have contact with the

Federation. We are to arrive as quickly as we can, not

just to stop any problems with the Klingons but also to see

if the Tautee peoples were able to save themselves.

Admiral

Hoffman reminded me that the Prime

Directive is in effect in all matters

regarding the Tauteean people.

The U.s.s. Farragut, captained by Kelly

Bogle, has been ordered to the Tautee system

to give us backup if needed. Since I served with

Kelly Bogle on the Farragut, this should prove

to be an interesting reunion.

Captain Kirk tapped his captain's log off

and surveyed the bridge. Sometimes, in the middle of

long deep-space missions, the bridge seemed

small and crowded. The padding in his captain's

chair, usually comfortable, had grown thin. At

Starbase 11, they would have fixed that, as well as

done minor[*thorngg'albeit

unnec[*thorngg'tune-ups to justify the

Enterprise's stay.

But Admiral Hoffman had canceled their

routine maintenance. She knew that Scotty kept

the ship in tip-top condition, and she also knew that the

Enterprise hadn't been out as long as usual.

Only the last mission had been hard, on Kirk as

well as the crew, but had left the ship in good

physical condition. He had looked forward to a stay

on a starbase where he could eat food from

someone else's kitchen, and have the days to read the

antique real-paper copy of One Hundred

Years of 9

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn

Rusch

Solitude that he had been saving for a special

occasion.

Now it was beginning to look like he wouldn't even get

one day of solitude. He had a hunch this mission

would take as long as the last. Maybe even longer.

His mood seemed to be catching. The rest of the

crew appeared to be just as disgruntled. Uhura

leaned against the orange console, one booted leg

extended, her elbow resting near the controls. Her

long slender hand held her

earpiece in place as she monitored the

subspace communications, just as Kirk had

requested.

Ensign Chekov looked as if he hadn't

slept at all in the last week. His hair was

tousled, and deep shadows had formed under his dark

eyes. His fingers, tapping on the edge of the helm

controls, provided the only real noise in the

room.

Sulu was monitoring the navigation

controls with a bit more interest than was necessary. Just before the

orders came in for this mission, he had asked for time

off to practice his swordplay. He had been

planning to participate in a

tournament scheduled on Starbase ll during their

stay. He hadn't shown obvious

disappointment about the change in plans, but he did

ask that his time off be canceled.

Only Spock seemed unaffected. He sat

at his post in front of the science console, the blue

light of the computer screen making his

greenish-tinted skin an odd sort of gray.

Kirk couldn't stand the silence. He stood and

walked to the science console, placing a hand on 10

THE RINGS OF TAUTEE

the back of Spock's chair. "Do we have any more

information?"

"Very little, Captain," Spock said. He pushed

a button and then swiveled his chair so that he faced

Kirk. "Our long-range scans show that every

planet in the system has been destroyed."

"Every planet?" Kirk asked. He couldn't

make himself believe that much destruction had oc-

curred in one system without the sun going nova.

"Fifteen major planets," Spock

said, folding his hands together. "We will not know how many

minor ones were destroyed until we are closer."

"How? How could fifteen planets disappear so

quickly?" Kirk asked.

"They did not "disappear,"" Spock said.

"Sen- sors show large debris fields in the areas

of each planet, slowly expanding to form rings.

Intense waves of subspace interference are surging

out of the system. The closer we get, the more intense the

disturbance."

"Could this interference destroy planets, Mister

Spock?"

"I do not know if the interference is the result of the

destruction or the cause," Spock said. "tilde

When we arrive at the system I may be able to get

STAR TREK - TOS - 78 - The Rings of Tautee

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