The Rings of Tautee (11 page)

She believed she had destroyed her entire race.

A shiver ran down his back. Whether or not she was right, he had to listen to her.

Spock had swiveled in his chair and was staring at her. Uhura took her hand away from her ear, her wide brown eyes soft with compassion. Sulu turned, mouth open. McCoy took a step forward, reached for the woman[*thorngg'Prescott[*thorngg'b let his hand fall a few inches away from her.

The Tauteean on the floor was breathin g in deep shuddery breaths. He put a hand on the wall, and 1 1 6 THE RINGS OF TAUTEE propelled himself upward, as if her words meant more than his pain.

"Prescott," he said, his voice shadowy with lack of oxygen.

"It's all right, Folle," she said, without even turning around.

Kirk frowned. He had been so convinced that the Klingons had caused this with a superweapon[*thorn] and he still wasn't willing to rule that possibility out. But the possibility had diminished greatly, and he didn't need Spock's gift with percentages to tell him just how much.

But that didn't solve the problem from the other side. The Klingons had accused him of using a special weapon. He had thought it a cover for their own behavior, but what if they were both wrong, and this Prescott was right?

Kirk couldn't examine her evidence alone. He needed the Klingons here as well.

"Captain James Kirk," she said. "I will give you the answers you've been seeking."

He nodded, feeling a bit offbalance from the new direction the conversation had gone.

"Before you tell me," he said, "there's someone else who needs to hear this story. Let's wait until he gets here."

As if on cue the door to the turbolift whisked open and KerDaq emerged, flanked on both sides by security men. Next to the Tauteeans, KerDaq looked like a giant. He towered over Kirk. Prescott only came to his beltline.

KerDaq brushed her aside as he strode across the bridge, his gaze, fierce under his abnormally pronounced brow ridges, only on Kirk.

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch Kirk held KerDaq's gaze. Klingons bullied anyone weaker and they respected strength.

Kirk could play the game, better than KerDaq would ever know.

"Why didn't you let us die in battle, like warriors?" KerDaq demanded, his voice full and angry. It rumbled through the bridge as if the Enterprise were too small to hold a Klingon presence.

Kirk noticed that Prescott stepped back, shocked, and almost afraid at the appearance of the huge, rough Klingon. Tauteean features were very similar to human features. She had been staring at Spock as if she had never seen anything like him. A Klingon must have seemed like something out of a nightmare.

"Your death would have served no purpose," Kirk said, keeping his voice loud and firm and strong. "I would have loved to blow your ship from space, but this time I can't claim credit for the explosion. The subspace wave destroyed your ship, not the Enterprise."

"I know that, Kirk." KerDaq moved one step closer to Kirk. "You lured us into a trap."

KerDaq spat out the words.

Kirk resisted the urge to wipe the saliva from his face. Instead Kirk laughed. The laugh sounded forced and calculated to him, but KerDaq wouldn't know the difference.

KerDaq glowered.

Kirk's laugh became real. He had never induced that disgruntled an expression in a Klingon before. "You may be right about that."

He pushed past KerDaq, brushing hard against KerDaq's shoulder, 118 THE RINGS OF TAUTEE spinning the Klingon slightly around. Kirk knew KerDaq wouldn't attack him, at least not at the moment. Klingons were brutal and fearless warriors, but they were also smart. KerDaq would listen.

He had no other choice.

"This is Prescott," Kirk said, stopping near the small, thin woman, yet turning to face the Klingon. "She is a member of the race that inhabited this system."

"I do not care, Kirk. What has happened is between you and me."

"No," Kirk said, glaring at KerDaq. "It is not."

He put his hand on Prescott's shoulder and was surprised to feel her flinch. Her bones were fragile and his hand heavy. He hoped he hadn't hurt her. Then she smiled at him, bravely, as if she was trying to overcome fear.

"Kirk," KerDaq said.

Kirk held up his free hand for silence.

KerDaq remained quiet and for the first time Kirk was thankful for a reasonable Klingon.

Then Kirk bent toward Prescott. "I want Ker-Daq to hear what you have to say. Please, tell us what you said earlier, and explain how it all happened."

Prescott licked her thin lips. Her gaze darted from Kirk to the Klingon to McCoy before resting on Kirk again. She looked almost frightened, as if she were in a situation her brain couldn't completely fathom. Kirk couldn't even imagine being in her shoes.

She took a deep breath, then glanced around at Folle, who nodded. When she turned back to Kirk, 1 1 9 Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch she seemed stronger and there was a light in her eyes.

"We had hoped to supply all our people with unlimited power," she said. "Our experiment was based on the largest moon of the ninth planet. It was the first to break up."

"This means nothing," KerDaq said, almost spitting on the floor in disgust.

"You are on my ship, KerDaq. You will listen to Prescott."

KerDaq crossed his meaty arms over his chest, but he said nothing more.

Spock, however, hadn't taken his gaze off Prescott. He stood slowly and approached her, as if she had said something that resonated for him.

"What type of energy experiments were you conducting?"

A slight tremble ran through Prescott. Kirk could feel it underneath his palm. Spock made her uncomfortable, but she gave no outward sign of it.

Instead she met his gaze like an equal. "We created a fusion reaction in the center of the moon, contained by a magnetic shield and the moon's natural crust."

Spock glanced at Kirk and then back at Prescott. Kirk knew exactly what he was thinking. Such an idea had been tried successfully in hundreds of systems throughout known space. It would not have had the power to break apart the moon, let alone the entire system.

KerDaq snorted in disgust and then said, "We tried such things a thousand years ago and we did not destroy our system."

THE RINGS OF TAUTEE "Yes," Spock said, ignoring KerDaq.

"Fusion power is a tried and reliable power source for many pre-warp cultures."

"Pre-warp?" Prescott's friend, Folle, asked.

"It's a term for cultures at your level of advancement," McCoy said. Then he raised his head slightly, giving the Klingon a sideways glance, of a kind that always made Kirk wary. "So you think, Prescott, that your experiments had something to do with this destruction."

She shook her head. "I don't think it, Dr.

Leonard McCoy. I know it."

"A runaway fusion reaction could not cause this kind of destruction." KerDaq said.

"Any child knows that is not possible."

"Let her finish, KerDaq," Kirk snapped.

Prescott moved out from under Kirk's hand. She moved into the center of the upper deck, as far from the others as she could get. It was as if this subject was so painful, she could not take in anyone else's presence, anyone else's warmth.

Kirk let her move away. "Prescott," he said softly, carefully, unwilling to let the moment pass. "A runaway fusion reaction might have destroyed the moon, but nothing more. There was no method that could have spread a fusion reaction through space."

Prescott wrapped her arms around herself as if she didn't hear him. Folle walked up behind her.

She stepped away from him. "Prescott," he said, "we didn't do it. Just like I told you."

She shook her head.

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch Spock's attention hadn't wavered from her. "The destruction is, however, centered on the location of the ninth planet. We rescued you from a base inside the moon of the fifth planet. What were you doing there?"

"Our base was the control central," Prescott said. "The first energy was to be projected to our moon.

From there it would have been distributed throughout the system."

"Projected?" Kirk repeated. Suddenly he knew what had happened. He glanced at Spock, who looked almost visibly shaken. Spock knew too.

KerDaq took a step toward Prescott. "You pros jected it?" Even KerDaq had guessed what was coming next.

Kirk put up a hand for KerDaq to stop and he did.

Prescott held her ground, even though her eyes looked like those of a stunned deer. Color rose in her cheeks. Folle stood behind her like a pillar, giving her support.

Kirk swallowed. "What method," he asked slowly, "were you planning to use to project the energy?"

Prescott turned to Folle, who stepped forward. Kirk knew instantly that it had been Prescott who was behind the fusion power idea. But it was Folle who championed the method of transportation to get the energy to the inner planets.

"A form of microwave transmission," he said.

He held his head high and there was no evidence of shame in his posture. He still didn't understand what had gone wrong. Nor did he accept the blame. 122 THE RINGS OF TAUTEE What had he said a moment ago? Prescott, we didn't do it. Just like I told you.

Just like I told you.

She had known all along and believed she had caused the death of all her people.

Kirk felt a wave of compassion run through him, despite all the destruction. She had lived for weeks with the knowledge that she had destroyed her people, and everyone around her had denied it. Denied it all.

"Microwave transmissions cannot carry or contain the power you would have received from such a fusion reaction," Spock said. "How did you solve the problem of containment?"

Folle frowned as if something in the tone of Spock's question bothered him. "We created a feedback loop, using part of the power of the beam itself to contain it."

KerDaq spit out, "Fools!"

Two dots of color appeared on Folle's cheek, but if Kirk were to wager on the cause, he would guess that Folle was angry at the accusation, not at feeling as if he were the cause.

But Prescott's gaze met Kirk's. "I know something went wrong. What was it?"

"Spock," Kirk said, indicating that he should exp lain.

"Your idea for energy was sound, but your delivery system was flawed," Spock said. "A microwave carrier beam is not a container. It is a strainer filled with water. Instead of carrying the water from one place to another, it runs out through the thousand holes that compose the strainer. Or in your case, 123 Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch your beam dripped power. It lost more power than it carried."

Folle's frown deepened. But Prescott looked vaguely relieved, as if knowing what had gone wrong helped her somehow.

"And that caused the destruction?" she asked.

"By creating a feedback wave from the lost power, you created a loop within the containment field." Spock was still explaining. He seemed to believe she needed the in-depth understanding as well as the short answers. "The loop became far more powerful than the energy it contained."

"We knew that would happen," Folle said. "We had a method of draining the containment field at the receiving end."

KerDaq snorted. "Such stupidity should be re-warded with death."

"It has been," McCoy said softly.

Kirk shivered.

And for a moment the bridge was deadly silent.

Kirk was getting a clear picture of the problem.

It was nice to know the cause, but that wasn't enough.

The magnitude of the destruction terrified him, and he still didn't understand why it was increasing.

Spock ignored KerDaq and McCoy and went on. "The containment field would never reach the destination. It would instantaneously feed back down into the power source itself the moment the beam was turned on."

"Setting up a feedback loop inside a fusion reaction," Kirk said.

TFIE RINGS OF TAUTEE "In essence," Spock said, "melting a hole through known space and into subspace."

"A hole that sends out destructive waves of subspace interference," KerDaq said. "Waves that destroyed my ship."

"A hole," Kirk said, "that we somehow have to close."

Chapter Seventeen THE EMERGENCY BACKUP SYSTEMS had kicked in.

Captain Bogle liked the darkness. It reinforced the sense of urgency, and his crew always worked well when things were tough. He had diverted the main power to the shields in the last skirmish with the Klingons, but even that was failing.

The red-alert lights were blinking in the background, bathing the bridge in rotating red. The eerie color made his officers look as if they were bleeding, something that no one seemed to notice but him.

Bogle would have disconnected the red-alert lights if he could have.

But he couldn't. It seemed they were as essential to a starship as air.

On the screen before him the remaining opera

THE RINGS OF TAUTEE tional Klingon ship hung silent and deadly, its green looking sick and pale against the livid red of the bridge.

"Our shields are at forty percent," Science Officer Lee said. "Not enough to withstand the coming subspace wave."

Bogle clenched his fists. The Klingons had targeted his shields. They had recognised that weakness and had gone for it. If he couldn't get more power to the shields, the Klingons would succeed in destroying the Farragut.

"How long do we have?" Bogle demanded.

"Two minutes," Lee said.

Bogle punched his intercom button to get his chief of engineering. "Projeff, we need more power to the shields."

"I've already diverted everything I can think of."

Bogle could tell from Pro's voice that he knew the importance of the problem.

"Well, divert everything else.

Including the damn red-alert lights."

"Aye, sir." Bogle thought he heard a chuckle in Projeff's voice. Pro knew how much Bogle hated those lights.

"Good," Bogle said. "Boyle out."

Four members of his bridge crew were attempting to divert power as well. Those shields were crucial, especially since the wave strength was increasing for reasons none of them could yet figure out.