The Rings of Tautee (2 page)

"From the last survey results," Spock said, "I would estimate there to have been two billion, six hundred million spread out over the four inhabitable planets of the system."

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch "Two billion?" Probably all dead.

Kirk couldn't let himself think about all those lives. He couldn't.

He moved over beside his command chair and stood facing the front screen, which showed the stars streaking past. Two hours until the Enterprise arrived. Two hours of waiting and wondering what had become of the billions of humanoids who lived in the Tautee system.

If all fifteen planets were destroyed, he knew what had happened to those people.

He dropped into the captain's chair and winced at the thinness of the padding against his back.

This would be a long two hours.

Dr. Leonard McCoy strode down the corridor toward cargo bay five. He was hardly ever on this deck, and the on-duty personnel were watching him as if they had never seen a medical officer before. They skittered out of his way, avoiding eye contact, and hurried to their posts. Ensigns, most of them, newly assigned, probably, with drudge duty that he didn't even want to think about doing.

They probably had been looking forward to the maintenance stop as much as he had.

No stopover on Starbase 11. He hated the thought of that. He had some experiments growing in his lab that needed the considered opinion of Dr. Beth Jones, one of the most brilliant scientific minds he had ever come across. Dr.

Jones was on Starbase 1 1.

And McCoy wasn't.

Nor was he likely to be for some time. Even when this new mission, whatever the hell it was, 12 THE RINGS OF TAUTEE was over, the ship would probably dry-dock at some other starbase.

Dr. Jones had expressed interest in his research, and she had also mentioned an interesting test that could be done with a medical tricorder. A modified medical tricorder. But McCoy was a doctor, not an engineer, and he didn't even know how to take the damn things apart, let alone how to operate on them to change their function and readings.

So he contacted a real engineer, only to discover from the computer that Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott was in a cargo bay[*thorngg'and had been in the cargo bay since some time that night. He had left orders that he was not to be interrupted unless there was an emergency.

McCoy hesitated only a second before entering the cargo bay. Scotty obviously wasn't working on anything ship-related. If he had been, the order not to interrupt would have come from the captain. Which made, in McCoy's mind, the emergency qualification invalid. Especially to him.

The cargo-bay door slid open with a pneumatic hiss.

"I said I didna want to be disturbed."

Scotty's voice sounded oddly dampened, as if it should echo but didn't.

For a moment, McCoy was too stunned to reply. In front of him were two of the biggest, ugliest machines he had ever seen. And between them was a large monitor, on which blue sky stretched for what seemed like miles over carefully trimmed green grass.

"What in Hanna's world . . . ?" McCoy said, 13 Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch stopping just inside the door as it hissed closed.

The two machines seemed to take up a large percentage of the cargo bay. Mister Scott was on his hands and knees, his head halfway inside one of the machines, making some sort of adjustments. McCoy could hear him talking to the machine.

After a moment the chief engineer pulled his head out, put his hands on his hips, and glared at McCoy.

"Well, Doctor, now that you've seen it, do you like it?"

McCoy didn't really know what to make of it.

He had no idea what it was. Or what it was for.

"I take that as a yes," Scotty said.

All McCoy could do was nod and stare into the big screen at the blue sky and green grass. He really needed a vacation. He knew that now. And from the looks of it, so did Scotty.

Scotty stood and brushed off his pants, then moved over beside McCoy. He stopped, hands on hips, smiling at the scene on the monitor as if it was a newborn babe.

"What is it?" McCoy finally managed to say.

"Why, it's a golf course," Scott said. His voice sounded almost sad that McCoy hadn't recognized what he was working on. "What else would it be?"

"A golf course?" McCoy asked. "What's the point?"

"Escape, lad," Scotty said. "Here, try this on."

He handed McCoy the large helmet with the wires hooked to the large machines.

"I don't think[*thorn]" "Do it," Scotty said. "It won't hurt you."

THE RINGS OF TAUTEE Doubting his own sanity, McCoy stared at the rubber padded helmet for a moment, then slipped it over his head. The glasses came down over his face and suddenly, instead of staring at the green grass and blue sky through a monitor, he almost felt as if he were there. And for a moment he thought he could hear the wind blowing over the open fields.

Almost reluctantly, he pulled off the helmet and handed it to Scotty. "What is it?"

"Holographic projectors working in tandem," Scotty said, beaming, and pointing at the two machines. "I think I have them finally tuned. Now, if they'd just stay that way."

McCoy snorted in disgust. "Holograms. The future, they call it."

"That they are, lad. Maybe someday you won't need the helmet."

"Humph," McCoy said in response. "They keep saying holograms will be doing everything we do. As if they could replace me with one."

Scotty laughed and patted the doctor on the shoulder. "Doctor, no one could replace the likes of you."

The illusion of grass on the large monitor started to shimmer slightly and Scotty quickly ducked to the machine on the right, muttering to himself as he went.

After a moment, the picture stopped shimmering. Scotty slid out of the machine, grinning, a long dark streak running from his right eye to his chin. "Now, what's so important it couldn't wait until I finished the eighteenth green?"

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch "Eighteen? You did eighteen scenes like that?"

McCoy pointed at the monitor.

"Aye," Scotty said. "Including the fairways and teeing areas. A golf course needs eighteen holes, ya know."

McCoy shook his head, then glanced down at the tricorder in his hand. Suddenly his lack of engineering skills seemed painfully obvious. Scotty could create something out of nothing. McCoy needed help modifying his tricorder.

"Mister Scott, since we're not going to Star Base Eleven, I[*thorn]" He didn't get the rest of his sentence out of his mouth. Suddenly the light in the room dimmed and then came back up. The grass and blue sky both suddenly looked as if they were a lake surface being blown by a stiff wind; then the picture went out.

McCoy could smell the distinct odor of overheating equipment.

Scotty dove for the machine on the right but was too late. Something exploded and sparks flew everywhere.

"Mister Scott," the captain's voice came over the intercom. "We have a power drain."

"Aye," The word held a mixture of sadness, regret, and loss. Scott took a step back from the smoking machines. He shook his head.

"Mister Scott?" The captain's voice did not sound happy and McCoy smiled.

"Give me five minutes," Scott said, "and I'll fix your power drain."

"Then I'd like a report," the captain said.

"Kirk out."

THE RINGS OF TAUTEE The smoke was thick and smelled of electrical cables. McCoy suppressed both a cough and his smile. He held out the tricorder.

"Is it broken?" Scott asked.

McCoy shook his head. "I need some modifications."

"Ach, so do these poor beasties. I'll clean up this mess and then come to sickbay."

McCoy slung the tricorder over his shoulder.

"Thanks." He opened the bay door, thankful for the fresh air of the corridor. He coughed once, then stopped outside the door. "One more thing, Mister Scott."

"Aye, sir?"

"Why are you building a golf course?"

Scatty rose to his full height, as he often did when his pride was assaulted. "I am a Scotsman, lad. We invented the game."

McCoy nodded.

And then waited until he was in the turbolift before he started laughing.

Chapter Three PRESCOTT SAT in her chair in the dimly lit amphitheater. The screens had been dead for hours now. The environmental controls were running on emergency power, and the gravity had gone from normal to low.

The chair was bolted into the floor for just this sort of emergency, and she wore the restraining bands on her ankles and thighs, roping her in place. The idea had been to bolt everything down in case the gravity controls failed. That way the researchers could continue their work even under the lowgrav conditions of the moon. She doubted that the designers ever thought the bands would come in handy in the almost zero gravity of the remaining hunk of the moon.

The center's planners had thought that the gravi18 THE RINGS OF TAUTEE ty controls would break down monthly. Instead, this was the first time anyone had had to use the system. Yet another miscalculation in a whole, disastrous series of them.

The room shook slightly, stirring the dust. Every few minutes the base rattled. It was already unstable. With each shake, she assumed the containment would break, and the cold darkness of space would rush in and take them all to a very quick but very painful death.

She licked her lips. They were dry and caked with grit. Dust, dirt, and debris floated around her, unhampered by bolts.

A computer had broken through one of the screens and was at the moment floating near the ceiling, sent there by that last moonquake. In a few minutes it would settle slowly back to the floor somewhere.

She had thought she was going to die in this room, but so far it hadn't worked out that way. Somehow, by some miracle, the base had held together when the moon broke apart.

All the ripping and tearing and screaming and shaking she had expected to hear, but couldn't, as she watched the fifteen planets in the Tautee system silently blow apart had happened when the moon shattered. But, apparently, a large chunk of the moon had held together.

Within that large chunk resided the center.

Lucky her. Lucky all of them. They had a few extra days to think about dying.

Folle was pleased; he somehow thought they 19 Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch might survive. He was scavenging, seeing how bad the damage was in the rest of the center.

And who else was alive.

She estimated that a few hundred had lived. The computer terminal in front of her had shown her a schematic of the center just before a power surge shut the machine down. Several sections appeared to have collapsed. But several had survived.

A few hundred tired, injured, homeless Tauteeans to carry on until their air ran out, or their containment cracked and let in the cold of deep space.

For days after her home planet broke apart, killing over a billion, she didn't much care if she lived or died. All she kept seeing was the blue-green meadow surrounding her parents" home, the stream with the silver fish, and her old pet Sandpine. They were now all gone, destroyed by something she had headed.

Destroyed by her "project."

""I don't know that for sure," she said aloud.

Folle had said that to her fifty times as he tried to help her regain some strength. We don't know for sure, he had said. We can't know.

He had meant that they couldn't know because the equipment couldn't tell them. But she knew the real truth behind Folle's statement.

They couldn't know because not knowing kept them sane.

If she knew for certain that the Kanst Energy Experiment was responsible for the breakup of the Tautee system, she'd never be able to take another breath. She and her fellow workers would be the 20 THE RINGS OF TAUTEE greatest mass murderers of all time. She would have killed all her people.

Her mind couldn't embrace that idea.

Refused it outright.

Even though she knew that everyone was dead, she could still see her parents" faces when she closed her eyes. It seemed no different from living the rest of her days in this destroyed facility, far from home.

Except that her heart ached. Literally ached, as if someone had stabbed her there.

She took a deep breath and glanced around at the empty room and the debris just now settling back toward the floor in the weak gravity.

Folle had been gone a long time. He had tried to take her out of this room, this place where she watched her entire race die, but she had refused to leave. For the past two days, he had brought her food and news of the two hundred people in the nearby command center.

He had told her of the blocked corridors and twisting steel beams. He had said that the others had hope of survival. And he had asked why she hadn't.

He knew the answer. He was as good a scientist as she was. The bit of moon that held them together wouldn't remain in one piece forever. If it didn't shake itself apart, it would hit other space debris and shatter.

There were a thousand other possibilities. Every scenario she ran ended with their deaths.

The main door clanged. She took a deep breath 21 Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch of the dusty air, trying to brace herself for Folle's energy. He was trying to keep her alive. He was trying to keep all of them alive, for what she didn't know.

They had no right to live.

Even if they hadn't caused the destruction.

Everyone else was dead. They had no right to survive.

She turned to watch him. He was still a beautiful man, thinner than he had ever been, but beautiful.

He jumped offthe top step, and half-floated toward her.

He grabbed her shoulder to stop his momentum, then held the chair as he braced himself against the desk beside her.

"I have a crew patching leaks in the A Section," he said.

She shrugged. "Busy work. We both know it won't last long."

"Long enough to be rescued," he said.

He had never said that word before. She bit back a sarcastic comment[*thorngg'How could anyone save you? We killed everyone in the universe[*thorngg'and instead asked, as reasonably as she could, "Do you really believe that some of the big ships from Tautee orbital labs survived?"