Belle Terre Read online

  With one more deep breath of the fresh ocean air, he said into the communicator, “Transporter room, do you have the governor’s location?”

  “I do, Captain,” the answer came back.

  “Then beam me there at once.”

  “Understood.”

  A moment later, while he was staring out over the ocean, the transporter beam took him. So much for resting and relaxing. He just hoped it wasn’t going to be the last time he got the chance to look over this ocean on this beautiful planet they had come so far to find.

  Countdown: 8 Days, 7 Hours

  Lilian Coates watched as Captain Kirk transported away, not even bothering to take the time to go to a normal transporter location. She had a sense that something was happening, and that something wasn’t going to be good for the colony.

  As a child she had called her feelings before something went wrong “the fist.” At the moment the fist was working full-time. It felt as if a deep sense of dread had clamped a hand around her stomach and was squeezing so tight that not even the beautiful day and the white sand of the beach could help relax it.

  It was the same feeling she’d had just before her father had died of a heart attack. The same feeling just before her husband, Tom, had been killed.

  Now it was here again.

  She turned and looked out over the calm ocean, trying to let the waves soothe her fears. She was making up problems, she was sure. More than likely the captain had simply been called away by a routine action. This planet was so peaceful, so tame, what could be going dangerously wrong?

  Maybe Kirk and Pardonnet were disagreeing on some way of dealing with colony protection again. She usually agreed with Kirk when she had heard both sides, even though Pardonnet was the reason she and Tom had signed up for this colony. And even with Tom dead, she still believed in the dream Pardonnet had for this planet. She loved the idea of less government, more freedoms. She could listen to Pardonnet talk for hours on those subjects.

  But when it came to defense and protection of the planet and the colony, she had always agreed with Captain Kirk’s ideas.

  She stared up at the area near the log on the sand dune where he had sat. It seemed very empty without him there. And the fist holding her stomach wouldn’t let go.

  She focused her attention on the children.

  Her son, Reynold, was playing with them. Since her background was in education, she had offered to watch the group of same-aged kids while their parents worked on setting up the colony. In a few weeks, they might even start some sort of formal school for all the children. But for the moment, she was just a glorified baby-sitter, and happy to be doing that much to help.

  The children were done with their game, so she started them back up the beach toward the path to the main colony. Another hour and it would be dinner break and all the kids would join their parents. Maybe by then she would find out what was happening. And why Captain Kirk had to leave the beach so fast, before she had even had the chance to say hello.

  In her stomach, the tight feeling of dread squeezed even harder.

  Chapter Two

  Countdown: 8 Days, 7 Hours

  THETRANSPORTER released Kirk in a large meadow that smelled of dried hay and autumn leaves, just the way the fall in Iowa smelled. As a kid, he’d always loved everything about the fall. The air here was crisp, much colder than the beach. Tall rock cliffs extended high into the air on his right, and the meadow was surrounded on the other three sides by what looked to be a thick forest of pinelike trees. The meadow was covered in a knee-high brown grass that rustled in the slight breeze. Kirk wondered which plant let off the dried-hay smell.

  Near the base of the cliff a group of three men stood, talking, gesturing at the rock face. Kirk instantly recognized the tall frame and thick brown hair of Governor Pardonnet. He was wearing perfectly neat clothes and, as always, doing most, if not all, of the talking. The governor’s pants looked as if they had just been pressed and the light blue jacket he wore was zipped halfway up over a matching shirt. Even the slight wind didn’t seem to be bothering Pardonnet’s hair.

  The other two were colonists Kirk hadn’t met before. One was tall with red hair and an angry appearance about him, the other stout, almost fat, and mostly bald. The short one didn’t have an inch of space on his clothes that wasn’t wrinkled, making him the perfect contrast to the governor.

  Pardonnet ignored Kirk’s presence in the meadow and kept talking to the other two as Kirk headed the twenty yards up the hill through the grass. The last time Kirk had talked to the governor, they had disagreed on how many of the colonists to send to the planet’s surface. And how fast to send them.

  Pardonnet was, of course, in charge of the colony, but Kirk was still in charge of the safety of the ships and the planet security itself. And Kirk had believed a slower, more paced flow of colonists to the surface would have been safer.

  Pardonnet, younger and seemingly always in more of a hurry, had wanted everyone moved down as quickly as possible to get started on their wonderful new world.

  It was only Spock’s logical conclusion that colonists would be safer on the surface of a planet than in ships in orbit that had swung Kirk to Pardonnet’s view. Now Kirk wished he hadn’t caved in. Evacuating all the people and their belongings back to the ships was going to be a problem.

  “Captain,” Pardonnet said as Kirk approached. “The rock from this cliff face is perfect for building. And it’s close enough to the main community that transportation will be easy.” Suddenly the governor seemed to remember his companions. “Oh, this is geologist Whitby Sprague.”

  Kirk nodded to the tall, redheaded man who didn’t bother even to nod or smile back.

  “And this is Albert Cadmand,” the governor said, indicating his short companion. “He’s our best structural engineer.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Captain,” Cadmand said. “You did a great job getting us here.”

  Kirk shook the man’s extended hand. “Thanks, but it was a group effort.” Then Kirk turned to the governor. “We have a serious problem.”

  Pardonnet almost laughed, his dark eyes twinkling in the light. “Your crewman told me it was an emergency. I can think of at least a dozen emergencies I’ve handled just since breakfast and I’ve felt that was an easy morning. Actually, the worst was—”

  “Well, I don’t think you’re going to handle this one before dinner,” Kirk said, interrupting. He resisted the urge to walk right up into the governor’s space. “The Quake Moon is full of quasar olivium.”

  The tall, red-haired man who hadn’t spoken suddenly choked, as if he’d swallowed too large a hunk of meat. Then he said, “olivium?”

  Even Pardonnet seemed to know what the material was as he stared at Kirk. The governor’s face had gone white and he almost looked like he might faint. It was the first time since they left Earth that Kirk had seen Pardonnet completely speechless. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, Kirk would have laughed.

  “olivium,” Kirk said, nodding, staring at Pardonnet, who was opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. “Quasar olivium. Hundreds of tons of the stuff, at least, from what my science officer tells me.”

  The governor moved over to a nearby rock and sat down, hard, as if his legs wouldn’t hold him up anymore. The kid was stunned.

  “Is this a good or bad thing?” Cadmand asked. The short engineer looked, in a puzzled way, first at the governor, then Sprague, then finally at Kirk.

  “Both good and bad, I’m afraid,” Kirk said.

  “This is a joke, Captain,” the red-haired geologist said, almost angry as he took a step closer to Kirk. “Olivium has never been found in its natural state.”

  “Until today,” Kirk said, smiling at the man. “But that’s not the problem.”

  “I’d say not,” Pardonnet said. “With that much of the most sought-after mineral in existence, this colony will never want for anything. This is just too perfect to believe. How can we be so lucky?”
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br />   The young governor was quick, Kirk had to hand him that. But it was going to take him a little more time to realize that having the only supply of what was going to be the most sought-after mineral in the galaxy meant every race would be trying to get ahold of it. And that would make his peaceful, bureaucracy-light colony here on Belle Terre the hardest place in the sector to defend.

  Assuming there was anything left to defend.

  “I’m afraid the problem isn’t owning, or what to do with, the olivium,” Kirk said. “The moon that contains it is about to explode and wipe out this planet in the process.”

  “No!” Pardonnet shouted, jumping back to his feet and rushing back at Kirk. “When? Why? And what can we do to stop it? There has to be something we can do.”

  “My science officer tells me the explosion will be within six days to one month,” Kirk said. “I have no real understanding of why it is happening, or how we can stop the explosion. I’ll know more within the next few hours. But I wanted to inform you as soon as I learned about it.”

  “The Kauld?” Pardonnet asked, his question taking on a sharp edge of anger. “Are they behind this?”

  “I don’t know, Governor,” Kirk said. “But I don’t think so. I think we’re just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “This isn’t the wrong place,” Pardonnet said, his face red with anger. “Nor the wrong time.”

  “Olivium can only exist in a state of quantum flux,” the geologist Sprague said. “If that kind of quantity of the material exists inside a moon, there’s no telling what is happening in there. How can you be sure the moon will explode?”

  Kirk looked at the geologist. “My first officer, Mr. Spock, told me it would happen with complete certainty. When Spock says complete certainty, you can count on it happening.”

  Sprague nodded, but still frowned.

  “You and other colonist scientists are more than free to double- and triple-check Mr. Spock’s findings,” Kirk said to the man. “In fact, I’m counting on it.”

  “We will,” Pardonnet said. “Oh, we will.”

  “Good,” Kirk said, staring at Sprague. “I’ll have him send you all his data as soon as I get back to the ship. The more input we have, the better I’ll feel about whatever we have to do.”

  “So will I,” the geologist said.

  “At the moment,” Kirk said, turning back to Pardonnet, “we need to focus our efforts on finding a way of stopping the explosion.”

  “If there is one,” the geologist said.

  “There has to be,” Pardonnet said.

  Kirk looked the young governor right in the eyes, holding his stare. “We have to be prepared in case we can’t stop the explosion.”

  “He’s right,” Cadmand said, stepping up beside Pardonnet. “We’d better be ready to leave.”

  “And that’s where I come in,” Pardonnet said. The thought of losing Belle Terre seemed to deflate the governor. Over the long trip out here, Kirk had seen the young governor go through many emotional states. It usually only took him a few seconds to bounce back to his idealistic, never-say-die attitude. And this time was no exception.

  “I agree with you on this one, Captain,” Pardonnet said. He squared his shoulders and straightened his jacket. “We’ll start the preparations for evacuation here on the surface and work to find a way to stop this explosion before it happens.”

  “Good,” Kirk said. “Expect to hear from me within a few hours with more information. I’ll keep you completely informed.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Pardonnet said. “We’ll do the same.”

  Kirk flipped open his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise. One to beam up.”

  As he waited the few seconds for the transporter beam to take him, he stared into Pardonnet’s eyes. There was no doubt in Kirk’s mind that the only way Pardonnet was ever going to leave this planet was kicking and screaming the entire way.

  Countdown: 8 Days, 7 Hours

  The inside of the small, plastic lab structure was deathly quiet, the air not even moving as Dr. Leonard McCoy bent over the wide-lens scanner and studied the bacteria he saw enlarged there. Nothing dangerous to humans at all. He could tell that immediately. Not the type of bacteria that could even survive in a human body. He’d have to run a few more tests to be one hundred percent certain, but at the moment he’d bet anything these little green beasties were harmless.

  But very, very important.

  He studied the bacteria again. These were bacteria that, when introduced to the soil, had the wonderful ability to help break down organic compounds and convert them quickly to nutrients for plants.

  This type of bacterium was native and original to Belle Terre. They had found it this morning while digging in an area of fast-growing brush. The bacteria seemed to increase the growing capabilities of soil and decrease the time it took a plant to come to full growth. If they tested out as they were indicating, the bacteria would be a good export to all farmers throughout the Federation.

  Belle Terre just might have something very important to trade.

  McCoy glanced up at the two faces waiting impatiently for his conclusion. The older woman with a head full of gray hair was named Dr. Audry. She was the colony’s chief botanist and the hardest-edged woman McCoy had run into in a long time. The second person in the small lab was Dr. Henry Memp, also a botanist. Dr. Memp had focused his career on alien plants, at times working with different branches of Starfleet on specific projects. McCoy had known of both of them by reputation before ever learning they were to be among the colonists on this mission. During McCoy’s all-too-rare breaks on the long trip out, the three of them had gotten acquainted.

  Now working with them was like a dream come true for him. He had spent the first week after arrival on Belle Terre working with the colony medical doctors to set up a central hospital and medical outposts in the different areas. He’d helped coordinate the emergency evacuation procedures and the assignment of medical doctors to the different colony regions on the planet.

  But the colony medical doctors hadn’t needed him much after that, besides an occasional inspection or advice on an injury, so when the two botanists contacted him for opinions, he was more than glad to go with them.

  They had spent the last few days digging in the fields, all working side by side to make sure that what the colonists were going to plant would, first, grow, and second, not turn deadly to the colonists when eaten. McCoy had been called away a half-dozen times, but had always managed to return to help fairly quickly. Now he was suntanned and tired, but had never felt better. He wasn’t going to mind at all spending time on this planet. There was certainly enough for all of them to do.

  He gave the green-tinted bacteria one more quick look through the scanner. He had no idea where the green color came from-it wasn’t chlorophyll, that much he knew. Still one of the mysteries of these little things. But they were harmless to humans, that much he was sure of.

  He smiled at Dr. Audry. “Can’t see a thing wrong. I’m betting it does exactly what we think it does.”

  “Great!” Dr. Memp said as Dr. Audry clapped her hands.

  “I still want to do the series of tests we have outlined to figure out why it works,” McCoy said. “And why they’re green-tinted. But I think we just may have a gold mine here in these little devils.”

  “I think you just may be right,” Dr. Audry said, her smile filling her wrinkled face.

  At that moment his communicator beeped. He thought about ignoring it for the moment, then knew that wouldn’t work.

  He stepped back from the scanner and indicated that Dr. Audry should look, then flipped his communicator open. “McCoy here. What is it?”

  “You need to return to the ship, Doctor,” a young voice said. McCoy didn’t recognize the voice, but that wasn’t surprising at this point, with all the senior officers scattered over the planet. More than likely it was some young kid taking Uhura’s place at communications and scared half to death.r />
  “And just why in blazes would I do that?” McCoy shouted at the kid.

  “Captain’s orders,” the kid said, not backing down at all. The youngster had nerve, McCoy had to give him that.

  McCoy wanted to take another swipe at the kid, but stopped himself. No point in killing the messenger just yet. “Any idea what the problem is?”

  “None at all, Doctor,” the kid said.

  “Understood,” McCoy said and snapped his communicator closed. He was just about as annoyed as he got. They had just made a major discovery here and he was being called back to the ship, more than likely because of some minor cut or scrape a nurse could handle.

  Both Dr. Audry and Dr. Memp were smiling at him. He knew that every time during the last day that he had been called away, he had gotten annoyed. But he had the right to be, he figured. This was very important work they were doing here.

  “Don’t worry, Dr. McCoy,” Dr. Audry said. “We’ll get some of the remaining tests done before you get back. Then when we’re all one hundred percent sure of the use of the bacteria, and its safety, we’ll tell the governor and go celebrate.”

  “Sounds perfect,” McCoy said. “Just don’t start drinking without me.”

  The other two both laughed and claimed they wouldn’t think of it.

  He turned and headed out of the small lab and across the edge of the bustling main colony toward the closest beam-down site. Whatever Jim had called him back to the ship for had better be good.

  And important. Because what he was doing down here certainly was.

  Countdown: 8 Days, 7 Hours

  Captain Sunn of the pathfinder ship Rattlesnake was sprawled in his captain’s chair, trying to kick the feeling that something really awful was about to happen. Up until a few minutes ago, he’d been sitting here bored out of his mind. Suddenly the uneasy feeling had hit him, a feeling he’d learned to trust over the years. But usually the feeling came up when exploring a dangerous area, or just before a flight. Not while just sitting in orbit.