Star Trek (7 page)

T
he devastation covered several thousand acres.

A dense carpet of what looked like saplings, though Corsi realized they were trees built along a more normal scale, washed up around the base of the giant banyans. The abrupt demarcation between rain forest and what looked like conifers must have indicated something about the soil, but Corsi didn't know what.

From her vantage point beside Copper on a low branch of one of the giant banyans, Corsi could see a giant rectangle of the conifers about a kilometer distant had been clear-cut. There were several low buildings of wood and metal near the center of the cleared area. Just beyond them was what looked like a broad straight road to nowhere. A landing strip, she decided, for something very large or something that needed as much margin of error as they could give it. To the right of the buildings a shallow basin, perhaps a hundred meters across, had been dug in the soil and lined with metal. The thin metal tower at its center confirmed her suspicion it was an antenna. Corsi was not an expert on agronomy, but much of the cleared land seemed to be in various stages of cultivation. Not so much a working farm, she decided, as an experiment to see what would grow.

Whoever these people were, they were here to stay.

More immediately significant was a broad road, a dozen or so meters wide, that was being carved through the trees directly toward the rain forest. Progress appeared to have been slow, trees felled near the edge of the cleared area had had time to turn brown. But the leading edge of the incursion was close enough for Corsi to hear the thud of hand axes.

“How long have they been here?” Corsi asked.

Copper batted at his left ear. “Long enough to do what you see.”

“Many meals?” Corsi guessed. It was plain the K'k'tict didn't measure time. “I've been meaning to ask: What does that left-ear gesture mean?”

“Surprise, embarrassment, confusion.”

“Ah. We do this for the same thing,” Corsi slapped her forehead.

“Yours is a violent people,” Copper said.

“Many would agree with you. But we have learned to moderate our violent nature through reason and compassion.” She indicated the clear-cut forest below. “That is not the work of my people.”

Copper batted at his left ear again.

“However, my people are not the only ones of this general design,” Corsi added, spreading her arms to indicate her two-arm, two-leg construction. “If we could get closer, I may be able to tell you who these rude guests of yours are.”

Copper began descending, which Corsi took as expressing a willingness to take her closer to the strangers.

The forest floor beneath the giant banyans was covered with a variety of fernlike plants, most only about knee-high; chest-high on K'k'tict. There was no real underbrush, and the areas between banyan root systems were like broad boulevards. It was Corsi's impression the trees and ferns got larger closer to the volcanoes.

As soon as the invaders hacked their way to the edge of the banyan forest, it would be an easy march to the K'k'tict tree town.

“[unintelligible noise] and [unintelligible noise] will go with us,” Copper announced, indicating Spot and Lefty from among the several K'k'tict waiting at the base of the tree. “The experience will aid their [maturity/education].”

Corsi revised her earlier theory that Spot and Lefty had not spoken in the presence of the leaders because they were of a lower caste. Apparently they were youngsters.

The three immediately headed in the direction of the strangers. Some of the remainder settled down to await the expedition's return, while a few headed back toward the tree town.

“Do your names mean anything?” Corsi asked after they had gone a short distance. If she was going to communicate, she'd have to address individuals as something besides
hey, you
. “Corsi is a shortened form of the name for an island my family came from.”

“Our names are our names,” Copper said, stopping. “We are who we are, not where we are.”

“I understand.” Corsi decided to set aside explaining that
Domenica
meant
Sunday
to a species that did not measure time. It was tempting to leave the name issue alone, but she had no idea how long she would be among the K'k'tict and clear communication was essential.

“My combadge does not comprehend, and renders your names as sounds I cannot emulate,” she explained. “Do you have simplified names?”

Blank stares all around.

“Would it be offensive if I gave you nicknames so that I might indicate individuals?”

“What names?” Copper asked.

“Well, your coloration is the feature most apparent to my eyes,” Corsi said cautiously, aware external coloration was the galaxy's most common source of prejudice. Seeing only expectation in her listeners, she went on. “I think of you as Copper, you as Lefty, and you as Spot.”

Lefty bowed her head low to the ground and began shaking it back and forth. Spot began batting her left ear furiously. For his part Copper seemed content to watch the other two.

“What did I say?” Corsi asked, concerned. “Did I give offense?”

“Spot has been her [tease her name] since she emerged,” Lefty said. “She
hates
it.”

“Ah,” said Corsi, making a note that violent head-shaking near the ground indicated laughter. “Sorry about that.”

Though the smaller trees of the forest looked like pines, they were of much denser wood. Corsi found it impossible to bend any but the smallest saplings and branches could not be casually brushed aside. If the hand axes she had heard were the invaders' only tools, she was impressed with their tenacity.

For their part, the K'k'tict moved silently through the thick and thorny underbrush. Corsi noted they did not travel in straight lines and they varied their pace, frequently pausing to listen. Remembering Copper's question about why she was killing K'k'tict, Corsi wondered if this stealth was instinctive or a survival skill recently mastered.

She noticed they kept their large, lemur eyes squinted almost shut long after they'd left the twilight of the banyan forest. Apparently adaptation to life beneath a few hundred meters of shade tree meant even the dappled sunlight they were moving through was painfully bright.

Copper had led them in a curving route that brought the recon party to the edge of the cleared roadway several dozen meters behind the workers. They were indeed clearing the land with only hand tools, watched over by guards armed with what looked like stylized crossbows. At first Corsi thought she was looking at slave labor, then realized the guards were watching the underbrush, not the workers. They were protection.

The beings themselves were humanoid, with skin as gray as Cardassians', but not scaled. They also seemed to share the Cardassian fondness for wearing black, but their hair color ranged from blonder than hers through orange and red to a maroon that was almost brown. When the closest guard glanced her way, she saw his eyes were a metallic yellow that looked almost artificial.

Zaire? Zoysia? Something. Corsi knew she'd seen a data file on these people, but they were advanced way beyond hand axes and crossbows. And they should not be here. Something was not right. She rocked back on her heels, unfocusing her eyes, and waited for the memory to fully develop. Nothing.

Giving up, she signaled Copper she had seen enough. The elder K'k'tict led them away from the strangers.

“I know of this species,” Corsi said as they regrouped in a small clearing, “though I have never seen them.”

She received understandably blank looks from the other three. However, she was not about to explain data files and life on other worlds to them.

“These are not my people,” she repeated, holding up one hand back toward them. “Coloration.”

The K'k'tict bobbed, acknowledging the point.

“Could we get closer to their camp?” Corsi asked. “Perhaps we can learn more about them.”

With a typically K'k'tict lack of comment, Copper turned and began moving silently through the underbrush in a new direction. Corsi followed, bent low to stay under the stiff branches of the trees, with Lefty and Spot behind her.

The clear-cut area was not as flat as it had appeared from the banyan tree. There were piles of logs apparently curing in the sun, the acidic tang of their resin threatening to trigger a sneeze with every breath. Conical mounds of smaller branches waited to be dry enough to burn. About two hundred meters from the buildings, however, near the edge of the shallow basin lined with metal, the cover ran out. Corsi wished for a set of binoculars, but made do with squinting.

By the long runway was what appeared to be the frame of a glider being carefully dismantled. Though it was large—she estimated it could have carried perhaps two dozen of the newcomers—it was not huge. Which meant the runway's expanse was indeed to give the landers a wide margin of error.

Gliders arriving without power and cannibalized for parts and metal meant the—
what
is
their name?
—were making a one-way trip to get here. It also explained the hand tools and crossbows. Keeping mass to a minimum meant no heavy machinery and weapons that used locally available ammunition.

But while the details made sense, the overall picture was wrong. What were these people doing here?

As if in answer, a column of blinding light descended from the sky.

“I
t looks like weapons damage,” Corsi said, eyeing the warped access panel beneath her gloves.

“I would love to disagree with you,”
Pattie's musical notes sounded in the helmet of her EVA suit.
“The thought of someone shooting a cloaked anthropological satellite is disturbing. Especially one orbiting a preindustrial world. But armor damage is consistent with a barrage by several very large lasers.”

Corsi nodded to herself as she keyed the release sequence on the access panel. She could have done this from the Shuttlecraft
Shirley
hanging a few dozen meters away, its rear hatch gaping toward them, but where was the fun in that? She enjoyed the EVA work.

Not as much as Pattie seemed to be enjoying Waldo Egg. The Nasat was delighted with what she called her demi-Work Bee.

Resembling an upright egg with four manipulative arms, the Nasat-specific design had been the brainchild—and personal project—of Louisa Weldon, an engineer with the S.C.E. team on the
Khwarizmi
. Her special interest was adaptive technologies to enable nonhumanoids to interact effectively aboard admittedly humanoid-centric Federation vessels. She'd known Pattie for years, Corsi had learned, and had designed Pattie's special chairs aboard the
da Vinci
.

Her latest invention was allowing Pattie to be the main muscle as they uncased the anthropological satellite. An unaccustomed role she was clearly enjoying as she easily manipulated the massive sections of shielding.

For her part, Corsi was finding it a little tougher going than she would have liked.

When working this close to an atmosphere, Starfleet SOP required her to wear an emergency jump harness over the standard EVA suit. Little more than an ablative heat sheath that gloved over the suit proper with a rear-mounted chute harness, it was designed to get a spacewalker safely to the surface in an emergency.

She had jumped in an emergency rig before, of course, in training. Though it was nowhere near as maneuverable or versatile as an orbital jumpsuit, it got the job done. She also understood the logic behind using safety equipment, especially in such a hostile environment. What she hated about it was the fact that it was piggybacked on her regular EVA suit, adding stiffness and bulk she did not enjoy working against.

And this was the first of twelve satellites, though—if things went according to mission specs—it was the only one they were going to have to field strip.

The Zhatyra system was unusual in that it had two class-M planets, both of which had developed sentient life. Corsi wasn't up on the details, but knew Zhatyra II, floating directly behind her, had a preindustrial culture while the most advanced nations on Zhatyra III were analogous to mid-twentieth-century Europe. The orbits of the two worlds were such that twice a year they were close enough to affect each other's tides.

The effect was small, only detectable with sophisticated seismic scans. And it was twice during one of the planet's years, but not the other's.

Corsi shook her head, clearing the cobwebs.

“What have you got there, Pattie?” she asked, realizing her partner had been silent for several minutes.

“I'm changing my assessment from one heavy laser barrage to several individual laser hits,”
the structural specialist said.
“The damage indicates remarkably consistent and massive bolts, but metal fatigue and decay around the hits varies from two years to a few weeks.”

“So whoever's been shooting our satellite has been coming by every few weeks, firing one shot and then going away again over the last couple of years? That makes no sense.”

“Even more interesting to me is how they were able to detect one, and apparently only one out of a dozen, cloaked anthropological satellites to shoot at in the first place.”

“Might be a—”

The satellite exploded.

After the fact, Corsi's mind had replayed the vision of a massive column of coherent light coming from deep space somewhere beyond Pattie's work bee. But that hadn't registered in the first heartbeat.

With the exterior shielding removed, the laser beam had struck the fragile interior of the satellite. The exposed sensor arrays, data storage cores, and isolinear networks had exploded in an expanding cloud of gas, shrapnel, and droplets of molten polymer. An armor panel, propelled by the expanding cloud, slammed into Corsi before she could react. Its speed had not been great, but its mass was sufficient to swat her out of orbit like a fly.

“Pattie!”

“Here, Commander,”
Pattie answered promptly over the comlink.
“Waldo Egg lost two and I think half arms, but pod is tight. Louisa evidently anticipated explosions.”

Corsi nodded inside her helmet. Zhatyra II rose and fell as she tumbled. It wasn't getting appreciably larger, but she knew she was falling. She applied thrusters minimally, conserving fuel as she oriented herself for atmospheric entry.

“What's your status?”

“It appears the blast gave me a retrograde boost. Waldo's thrusters aren't up to regaining orbit, so it looks like I'm taking a long spiral to Zhatyra II. You?”

“Taking a direct route,” Corsi said.

She was glad neither would be drifting alone in space. Intellectually she knew it was no more dangerous, perhaps even less dangerous, than waiting for rescue on the planet's surface, but the idea of hanging alone in the emptiness in nothing but an EVA suit…

Bringing her left forearm up, she tapped the shuttle interface. Time to send an emergency signal.

Nothing.

“Pattie,” she said, retapping the command sequence, “I can't get a response from the
Shirley
.”

“The stern bay was wide open and facing the satellite,” Pattie pointed out. “It's possible the internal systems were damaged.”

Corsi cursed. “Nailed all four targets with one shot. What are the odds on that?”

“I don't believe it was a weapon. I was scanning when it struck the satellite. I believe it was an interplanetary communications laser.”

“With our geosynchronous satellite directly over its target?”

“Apparently. Close, at any rate. Projecting along its path, I'd say the intended destination was somewhere near that ring of volcanoes.”

Corsi squinted at the globe below. Nothing but mottled grays and greens.

“You've got better visuals than I do.”

“Sending you coordinates.”

“Got 'em.”

The numbers were very close to where Corsi's fall was taking her. She fired her thrusters, bringing her trajectory more in line.

“You going to make a complete orbit coming down?” Corsi asked.

“Two at least. Though I have enough thrust to slow for atmospheric insertion, I may go a bit farther. Hard to say. Louisa never mentioned how Waldo was coming down on a planet.”

“I'm going to try for that ring of volcanoes,” Corsi said. “If you can get close, maybe we can meet up. Otherwise, just button down and hang on till the cavalry gets here.”

“Will do.”
Pattie's voice began to break up as her pod arced over the horizon.
“Good luck.”