Chapter Eight

ENCOURAGED BY HIS progress with Gallagher, Kirk then tried to warm up to some of the others. He eventually was able to talk pleasantly with Cohen and Harper. The geologist, Mark Veta, also warmed up to him. Kirk tried, but couldn’t share the man’s enthusiasm for discussing the cave system that apparently riddled Sanctuary. Although at one point, when Veta asked if he was interested in spelunking, Kirk felt the first rush of pleasure he’d had since they had left Earth. Mattkah had apparently taken an extreme dislike to Kirk and Dr. Sherman’s cool, formal demeanor did nothing but remind Kirk of how much he missed his old friend McCoy’s folksy good humor.

Kirk’s help was apparently not welcome in graphing the weather patterns, something of vital import in a world that had sudden flooding and sandstorms that could come out of nowhere and scour bones clean in five minutes. It was not welcome in charting this world’s stars. It was not welcome in biology or botany or geology or engineering.

After the third week, when most of his attempts to assist had been politely but obviously rebuffed, Kirk learned that the Falorians were coming to visit and discuss the colony’s progress. I’m not much of a diplomat, but I’ve had more experience than these boys, he thought. Perhaps this was a way he could contribute. Hell, Alex had even suggested as much.

The Falorians were to materialize in the same spot. Julius was already there to meet them, his hands clasping and unclasping as he paced back and forth. Kirk raised an eyebrow. Impatient boy, that one. He stepped forward. Julius froze in midstride and whirled to look at him.

“Uncle Jim,” he said, clearly surprised. “What are you doing here?”

Kirk smiled. “I’m an old hand at negotiations,” he said as mildly as he could. He didn’t want to step on Julius’s toes, and wasn’t certain that his expertise would be welcomed. “I thought I might be able to assist.”

Julius continued to glare, the surprised expression on his sharp features turning into annoyance. “I’ve been negotiating with the Falorians for some time now. I doubt I’ll need any assistance.” As an afterthought, he added, “Thanks, though.”

Kirk decided to be as honest as possible. “Julius, I respect your familiarity with this matter. But,” and he laughed a little self-deprecatingly, “I’m finding it hard to find a place here where I can contribute. You asked me to come here. You all but demanded it,” he reminded his nephew. “So, I’m here. I came, as you wanted. Let me help.”

Kirk couldn’t read the myriad of emotions that flickered across Julius’s face. Finally, the young man opened his mouth to answer. At that moment, Kirk heard the distinctive hum of a transporter and Lissan, along with two others, shimmered into existence.

Lissan blinked and drew his head back slightly. “Captain Kirk,” he said. “I did not expect to see you here. My meeting was with Julius.”

Before Kirk could say anything, Julius interjected smoothly, “My uncle and I were exchanging pleasantries. He was just leaving.” He turned and smiled. “I’ll see you back at the colony for dinner this evening, Uncle.”

The smile was pleasant, kind even, but Julius’s blue eyes glittered like chips of ice. Kirk forced a smile onto his own face.

“Certainly, Julius. Until then.”

It was obvious that Kirk’s expertise would not be welcome in dealing with the Falorians.

After that conversation, Kirk decided he would benefit from a walk around the perimeter of the colony. The sun was just starting to set and it was quiet and peaceful. He shrugged into a light jacket against the chill of the evening and strode forth.

He moved briskly, not wanting to run for fear of spoiling the quietude but wanting more than a stroll. It smelled so fresh out here. He was reminded of his many camping trips and an idea occurred to him. Perhaps he could be useful as part of a scouting trip. All he’d need would be a tricorder, shelter, a knife and a pan to cook in. It would be a challenge to learn how to find and harvest the abundant foodstuffs Sanctuary offered, and sleep under the stars of this new world.

The more he thought about it the better the idea seemed. He breathed deeply of the cool twilight scents and felt himself calming down. These weren’t Starfleet personnel; they were scientists, researchers, engineers. People who had spent most of their lives avoiding contact with people just like him. It was only natural that they’d take some time to warm up. In the meantime, he thought he’d finally come up with a way to contribute.

He was striding through a field now, and the heady scents of meadow flowers wafted up to his nostrils. He was disturbing some of them, and pale little spores flew up into the cool air, drifting to another spot upon which to settle and root, continuing the circle of life. Grinning a little, he created more breezes with his arms, sending them flying away to their new homes.

He felt better by the time darkness fell and he returned to the encampment. He’d missed dinner, so he went into the mess hall to see what he could rustle up. Mattkah, the irascible botanist, was there. Did the fellow ever stop eating? He knew that Talgarts had an unusually high metabolism, of course. Once he’d overheard another colonist refer to Mattkah as “the giant shrew.” He was downing an enormous bowl of oatmeal and as Kirk entered was drizzling at least a cup of honey on it.

Kirk bit his tongue against a sarcastic remark and instead said simply, “Good evening, Mattkah,” as he searched the cupboard for something quick, tasty, and nutritious.

Mattkah looked up with a surly expression on his flat face and then his eyes widened in horror. “Oh, no!” he yelped.

“What?” asked Kirk. “What’s wrong?”

Mattkah had risen and was now pointing directly at Kirk. “The spores! You’re completely covered with them!”

Kirk looked down and saw that indeed, his jacket and pants were dotted with tiny white spores from the little plants he’d walked through. He chuckled ruefully.

“It seems I am,” he agreed. “Don’t worry, there’s nothing dangerous in any of the plant life that we—”

“It’s ruined! You clumsy oaf, you’ve completely ruined the experiment! We started this on the second day we were here and now it’s all for nothing.” Mattkah had sunk back down in his chair, his head in all four of his hands. “We’ll have to start all over again. Didn’t you see the markers?”

Kirk closed his eyes briefly. Clearly, the flowery meadow through which he had so blithely trod was actually an outdoor laboratory. He had seen no markers in the darkling twilight, and even if he had, he wondered if he would have noticed them.

“Mattkah, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I would never have walked through the meadow had I known you were conducting research there.”

The sour look Mattkah shot him told Kirk that the Talgart didn’t believe him. Clearly, in his mind, Kirk was a lumbering elephant that had nothing better to do than to go gallivanting through delicate research areas, rendering weeks of work entirely useless. He gulped the rest of his oatmeal, helped himself to an armload of native fruits, and stormed out of the mess hall.

For a long moment, Kirk just stood there. Then he slowly returned the juicy, yellow-red fruit he’d been about to bite to the bowl on the center of one of the tables.

He’d lost his appetite.

He returned to his small, cramped but at least private quarters. Lying on the small bunk, he stared at the ceiling, counting the days until the next resupply ship would arrive and he could go home, where he belonged.

There was no place for him here.

Kirk’s door chimed. He blinked awake, startled, and glanced at the chronometer to see that he’d slept through breakfast. He reached for his robe, sashed it, and called, “Come in.”

The door hissed open. “Well, good morning, Mr. Chekov. I apologize for my present state. What can I do for you?”

“Sorry to intrude, sir, but there’s something I think you should see.” Kirk smiled wryly as he observed that although he was no longer in command, he was addressing Chekov, and Chekov was responding, just as they would have aboard the Enterprise.

“Sit down … if you can. It’s tight quarters here on Sanctuary,” Kirk said. Chekov took one of the two small chairs and Kirk took the other one. “What is it?”

Chekov frowned. “It may be nothing,” he said.

“Or it may not,” Kirk said.

“Well, I’m not particularly trained to contribute scientifically, although I have been helping out. Most of the time I’ve been assisting Alys in downloading and sending messages,” Chekov said. “You know, to loved ones back home.”

Kirk nodded. He hadn’t sent a single message. He had friends and acquaintances scattered throughout the galaxy, but unlike most of the colonists, there was no one on Earth—no one “back home”—he really felt like talking to.

“Subspace traffic has dramatically increased over the last four days,” Chekov continued. “And I’m not certain of this, but I think … Captain, I believe our communications are being monitored.”

“What makes you think that?”

Chekov shrugged, clearly troubled. “Nothing I can point to for certain. Little things. Echoes, blurry images, things like that.”

“That’s a pretty slender thread to hang charges of eavesdropping on, Lieutenant.”

“I know, sir. I probably shouldn’t have troubled you with this, but I didn’t know who else to take it to.”

Kirk leaned back, thinking. “For now, take it to no one. I want you to spend as much time as you can on sending these messages, and I want you to document every glitch you encounter. If this keeps up, we’ll tell Alex about it. It could be nothing more serious than the system needing to be fixed.”

“Aye, sir.” Chekov rose.

“And Chekov?”

“Aye, sir?”

Kirk grinned. “Thanks for thinking of me.”

Chekov returned the smile. “You were the only one I did think of, Captain.”

After he had gone, Kirk showered and dressed, thinking hard. One was trained to look for the most likely answer to any problem. Chances were, the equipment simply hadn’t been set up properly and there was a glitch in the system. As for subspace traffic being heavy, well, maybe this was a hot time for space travel in this sector.

Still, he trusted Chekov, and he knew the younger man wouldn’t have come to Kirk about this if he hadn’t had some kind of feeling that there was something wrong.

Just like the feeling Kirk was starting to have.

Scott was thoroughly enjoying himself. He was having a “day off,” as he put it, though others on the engineering team would have called it a day of hard labor. He, Alex, and Skalli were going to traverse the entire planet and tune up the monitoring posts they had set in each of the Sanctuary’s ecosystems. This was done once a week, whether it was needed or not, as so much of the colony’s research came from these posts. In Year Two, there would be much more extensive visitation of the areas, but for now, this sufficed.

There were eight of them: One in each icy heart of the arctic circles, two along the planet’s equator, and one on each continent. Oceanographer Leah Cohen had bemoaned the fact that they didn’t have the technology to put a few on the ocean floor, to which Scott had gallantly replied that in a few years he was certain the brilliant engineering team would figure out a way to do so. The bonnie lassie had rewarded him with a sweet smile.

The posts retrieved data from the surrounding area twenty-seven hours a day, data that was carefully analyzed. Each week (of course, the weeks here were a long nine days and three hours) someone would come and make sure everything was functioning correctly, and now it was Scott, Alex, and Skalli’s turn. Today, they were having problems with what Scott called The Desert One. Technically, it was Monitoring Post AE-584-B2, stationed in the arid climate of one of the major continents, but Scott preferred to keep things simple.

Alex was piloting, humming happily to himself, while Skalli was talking animatedly with Chekov, back at Sanctuary Heart, as the base itself was called, as the little shuttle Drake flew over the brown-yellow sands. Not for the first time, Scott admired the sleek design of the craft, the ease with which Alex was able to maneuver her. Aye, she was a bonnie one, all right.

His stomach rumbled. When they’d finished with this one, it would be time to take a break for lunch.

“Where’s a nice spot to have our picnic?” he asked Alex. Alex grinned over his shoulder.

“There are the most spectacular waterfalls near the top of the continent,” he said. “We stop for lunch every time we check out the post there and have never been disappointed yet. But you’ve got to keep the secret—don’t want everyone volunteering for post-check duty!”

“Ooh, a waterfall!” cooed Skalli, her eyes wide with anticipation. She was oblivious to the glares Alex and Scott were giving her. “Yes, Chekov, you heard right—we’re going to a waterfall for lunch when we finish. Won’t that be fun!”

Scott and Alex exchanged rueful glances. “Looks like somebody let the cat out of the bag,” Scott muttered.

“Yes,” Skalli was saying. “We only have—Chekov? Pavel, are you there? Hello? Drake to Sanctuary Heart, come in. Uh oh.” She turned to look at Alex. “It sounds as though we lost him.”

“Skalli, come in,” Chekov said urgently. “Skalli—Sanctuary Heart to Drake, please come in.” Silence. Damn it. Once again, they’d lost communications. In frustration, Chekov slammed his fist on the console.

“Hey, take it easy,” said Alys Harper, the blond human female who was serving communication duty along with Chekov. “No need to break it more than it already is.”

Chekov gnawed his lower lip, then made a decision. “Alys, go find Captain Kirk.”

“Kirk?” He couldn’t see her expression, but he didn’t need to. She managed to cram a great deal of distaste into the single syllable word. “Why? Julius is in command whenever—”

“Just go find him, all right?”

“Okay, okay, calm down, sheesh.” Muttering under her breath, she left to do as he had asked. Chekov found himself longing for the days when orders were given and followed without commentary, critique, or discussion.

He took a deep breath, calmed himself, and methodically began to check everything that could possibly be wrong on his end with the communications.

He had a gut feeling he wouldn’t find anything.

“Hello? Hello? Hmmm,” Skalli said. “Looks like we’ve lost communication for some reason.” She frowned, turning the problem over in her mind, then seemed to dismiss it. “Oh, well. We’re almost at the post anyway.”

Scott was rather more disturbed at the abrupt termination of communication than Skalli was, but she was right about one thing. Alex was already beginning their descent. He could see the landing area now, the only flat rock in a sea of sand and jagged peaks.

Alex eased the craft down smoothly and they gathered their tools, putting on their protective glasses and gloves. The sun’s glare was almost unbearable, and the post would be far too hot to touch with bare hands.

“One quick check before we go,” Alex said. He nodded. “Good. No sandstorms in the vicinity. We’ve got a window.”

When Scott opened the door, a blast of heat hit him with almost palpable force. For a brief moment, he recalled with longing the chilly rainstorm that had driven him to embrace this mission. Then he took a cautious breath of the hot ah” and jumped down into the sand.

They had a long walk ahead of them before they would see those waterfalls.

Kirk listened attentively as Chekov described the problem and everything he’d tried to fix it. On a whim, Kirk opened his communicator. “Kirk to Julius.” Nothing.

“Our communicators aren’t even working, then,” Chekov said. Kirk shook his head. Chekov pointed to the screen. “This is closing in on their area and we can’t even alert them to it.”

Kirk looked at the monitor and his grim mood worsened. A sandstorm was starting to form. Here on Sanctuary, that was a dangerous thing indeed. “If they’re still in the shuttle, they’ll detect it,” he said.

“But if they’re not, they could be caught in the open,” Chekov said. Kirk knew what the team would be wearing: the usual Sanctuary garb of comfortable pants and shirts that permitted easy movement, boots, gloves and glasses. Nothing more. Nothing that would remotely protect them from the whipping winds of a sandstorm. Not for the first time, he wished that they had a second shuttle. There would be no time to get the Mayflower II prepared to fly.

“Keep trying to raise them,” he told Chekov. “I’m going to go find Julius.”

Several long minutes were wasted in searching, since the communicators weren’t working. Kirk finally found Julius in his quarters. The door chimed several times before Julius answered the door. He was tired-looking and unshaven, and seemed surprised to see Kirk.

“What is it, Uncle Jim?”

“Your brother and two other members of this colony are about to be bombarded with a violent sandstorm, and we can’t reach them,” Kirk said bluntly.

Julius snapped to attention. “What the—what do you mean?”

“Communications are completely offline,” Kirk said. He flipped open the dead communicator. “Even these. There’s a chance that they’re still in the shuttle but if they’re outside in this—”

“Oh no,” Julius breathed.

After a ten-minute walk—more of an ordeal than a stroll, considering the terrible heat—the team reached the post. Although they had erected a protective physical shielding around it, it was obvious that the grit of the desert’s sand was taking its toll. Scott proceeded to quickly clean the internal workings and then put it through a test run. This would take about twenty minutes. It wasn’t enough time for them to hike back to the shuttle, so they resigned themselves to being hot for a while. They leaned up against a rock formation and waited. Scott closed his eyes.

“Hey, what’s that?” Skalli asked. She pointed to a flurry of motion in the distance.

“Uh oh,” Alex said. “That looks like a dust devil.” He removed his communicator and flipped it open. “Alex to Sanctuary Heart. Hey, how come you didn’t warn us about this sandstorm we’re … damn it. It’s dead!”

Scott felt a chill despite the severe heat. It was conceivable that the communications had been damaged on the shuttle, but for the individual communicators to quit working meant that something had occurred on a much larger scale. He rose, staring at the dust devil that was rapidly becoming a sandstorm.

“Alex, is there anyplace we could take shelter?” he asked. Because if there isn’t, he thought grimly, then all a rescue party will find will be three scoured, bleached skeletons.

Alex didn’t reply. He was fiddling with the communicator, still trying to raise Sanctuary Heart. Scott’s eyes flicked from the youth and his communicator to the encroaching storm.

He reached out and shook Alex by the shoulder. “Lad, we’ve got to take shelter!” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the rising wind.

Alex looked up at him wildly. Poor lad, Scott thought with a twinge of sympathy. This is his first real crisis. Alex had the charm and charisma to get people to follow him, but he didn’t seem to know a damn thing about how to lead when the chips were down.

“Over here!” It was Skalli, jumping up and down and waving her long arms. Scott hadn’t even noticed her get up, but she had clearly done so and found them protection against the storm. Scott shifted his grip to hold Alex’s upper arm and hauled the young man to his feet.

The sandstorm was beginning. As they stumbled to where Skalli stood, Scott was intensely grateful for the goggles. Grit scoured his face and even though he covered his mouth and nose with his hands, he felt the fine, powdery sand slip past his lips and into his nostrils. Alex was hacking violently by the time they squeezed into the crevice. It was easy enough for Skalli, but Scott reluctantly admitted to himself he’d had one too many desserts as he nearly got wedged tight. By sheer stubbornness he forced his way inside.

There was no light save what filtered in from the crevice, and they needed to get as far away from that as possible as wind and sand continued to find their way into their shelter.

“This way!” cried Skalli. “Follow my voice!”

Alex was able to stand on his own now. Coughing and gasping for air, both men stumbled toward the back of the cave. It grew darker and darker until finally Scott could see nothing. He still walked forward as quickly as he could, arms extended to feel his way, until Skalli’s slender, gloved fingers closed about his hands and guided him forward to sit on the floor.

They could still hear the wind crying and moaning like a wounded beast. Pressed together for warmth, for the cave was cold after the unforgiving heat outside, Scott felt Skalli shiver.

“It’s scary,” she said, voicing something that would probably have gotten her kicked off Kirk’s bridge. “It sounds like a monster or something.”

Scott was not inclined to reprimand her, as she was directly responsible for all of them surviving this in the first place. “Good job, lass,” he said, squeezing her shoulder.

Alexander Kirk, who had coaxed over a hundred people to pack up and move in pursuit of a dream, and who had completely panicked at the first sign of a real problem, said nothing.