Constellations (34 page)

A solitary figure appeared in silhouette against the ridge of the hill, shuffling down through the tall grasses toward them. Kirk instinctively tensed, and his right hand dropped toward his sidearm. “Sulu.” The captain motioned his head in the direction he was looking. “Tricorder,” he whispered.

Leaving McCoy to tend to Kerby, Sulu came up along Kirk's side, his tricorder open.

“I see one,” Kirk said.

Sulu looked up to the ridge. “Our Klingon friend? Impossible.”

“I didn't see another ship come in.”

“We didn't make the most discreet of landings,” Sulu said, fussing with the dials on his tricorder. “No energy weapons. Readings are…” He paused, and Kirk glanced down at the tricorder as Sulu ran the scan again. “Human. More than one.”

When Kirk looked back up the hill, there were now seven forms heading toward them, six distinctly behind the first, who now waved on the others.

“Humans!” called the first man, who suddenly ran toward Kirk and Sulu. “From Earth?”

Kirk was now holding his phaser, but pointing it down. The lead man stopped four meters in front of them, somewhat out of breath. “Does anyone need care?” He looked around hastily, touching his gaze on each face. “We have some medicines—”

“Shipwreck?” Sulu murmured, probably noticing the homemade textiles, as Kirk had. The captain nodded slightly, taking note of each person, then focusing on the apparent leader. He was in his sixties or more, or perhaps just life-weathered. There was a certain dignity about him, despite his obvious glee at having met other people. He held his hand out to Kirk.

Taking it, Kirk placed his phaser back against his hip and crooked a thumb over his shoulder. “We have a doctor,” Kirk said. “Who—”

“Yes, of course. Forgive me,” the older man said. “I am in shock at seeing you all. I am Captain Anders, and these are—we are—the survivors of a vessel that crashed here, much as yours. Is anyone injured?”

Kirk smiled and let out a soft chuckle. Captain Anders wasn't really listening; he was more gawking than anything else. His exuberance was contagious.

“Not anymore,” McCoy said as he rose, pulling Kerby slowly to his feet as well. “Just a concussion.”

“How're you feeling, Kerby?” Kirk asked.

“Fine now, sir.” The young man rubbed his forehead and ran his hand through his hair, pushing it out of the way of his eyes. “Slight headache, though.”

Anders moved to Kerby and shook his hand, then Sulu's and McCoy's. The other six, two women and four men, followed suit.

“Do you have food?” Anders asked. “I mean, do you
need
food?” He shook his head, seemingly to shake mental cobwebs loose. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” he said, turning back to Kirk. “I didn't even allow you an introduction.”

“Captain James T. Kirk, of the
Starship Enterprise.
” He nodded a salute. “How long—”

Anders smiled widely as if some witty joke amused him. “Forty-two years, Captain. It has been forty-two years since any of us has seen a face not our own or born to us.” He took Kirk's hand again and squeezed it tightly. “And now, Captain Kirk, here you are.”

 

Walking back to Anders's settlement was an experience—Anders rarely asked a question but answered each of Kirk's inquiries with a pages-long monologue. In the time it took to trek across the wilderness—if rolling hills of what looked like some native peat could be called such—Anders described the seasons and local geology. Apparently this area had just come out of their mild winter. The nights still got near freezing and the buds had not yet appeared on the sparse lowland trees; they wouldn't for another few weeks, and for the mountain trees, from which much of their wood came, it would be another two months before life touched them again.

“All this ground is very fertile,” Anders said, “just not for most of the seeds we brought with us.” He stooped down as they walked along the path and picked a stalk of dry, tall grass. “The root of this plant is all over our camp. We cultivate it for its oil, which is usable for both cooking and lighting. Even heating in the coldest months. It has been a godsend.”

As a starship captain Kirk had many skills. One of them was to listen to someone and collect the details of the conversation while also reflecting on other matters. He was calculating the possible damage to the Klingon shuttle and the time it might take to make repairs. He added to it the time needed to make way for this planetoid, and then the time it would take to find them. What bothered Kirk was how long he'd estimated the
Enterprise
might take in finding them. The Klingons could very well find them first. He had to be ready for that, and he couldn't endanger these people.

They entered the camp, and immediately people gathered round, pouring out of the rather sturdy-looking structures they'd built from the remains of their ship. There must have been about seventy or so, all smiling, most talking among themselves. Some were old—older than Anders. Many were obviously much younger, and there were some children. One little girl ran to Kirk as he stood next to Anders. Kirk leaned down and said hello. She meekly responded, then ran back to her mother. The crowd laughed and then began asking questions about Earth, about the Federation, about some other planets that others must have come from, old Earth colonies.

“Please, everyone be silent a moment,” Anders begged. “Please. Please, everyone.” Some quieted down, others did not. “Jonathan, please.” Anders leaned toward Kirk. “Jonathan is very talkative.” His voice rose again and he pointed toward the back of the gathering. “Missy, control your children.”

“And my husband,” Missy replied. Everyone laughed again, even Kirk. Like Anders, everyone's excitement was infectious.

“If Captain Kirk would be good enough,” Anders bellowed to regain attention, “I see you all have questions. But we cannot all mob our guests.”

Questions flooded forth.

“How many people on your ship?”

“Can we see it?”

“Are others coming?”

“Do you have movies?”

Kirk and the others answered as best they could, and after a short time the little girl who'd greeted him and then returned to her mother found her courage and her way into Kirk's arms. As Sulu, McCoy, and Kerby, each with a group of people around him, continued, Kirk smiled and handed the child back to her mother and pulled Anders aside.

“Let's talk.”

Anders nodded and motioned toward the back of one of their community buildings. The din of people talking was much softer here, and Kirk looked again at some of the buildings of Anders's settlement. One couldn't call them shacks or huts—they looked too strong for that.

“You've done a lot in forty-two years,” Kirk said.

“Thank you, Captain.” Anders smiled graciously. There was a charm about him, Kirk thought; a certain charisma made it clear why he led his band of crash survivors. “But I think you flatter us. We've had some good years, and some hard years. We had some livestock that survived the crash, and managed to domesticate some native birds, and we hunt some game. Most of the crops we had for the Beta Aurigae colony were for a much drier environment. This place is too humid in the summer months for much of it. We modified a few that had the best chances, and we do have a drier greenhouse. The first winter was most hard, as you can imagine. I think even more so because any radio we had was dead and there was little chance of rescue. The dread was colder than any wind.”

“You were the captain then?” Kirk asked.

“I? No, no.” Anders chuckled, then looked a bit past Kirk, perhaps searching for what seemed distant memories. “My father was captain. Adoptive father, when my own parents passed in the crash. I was sixteen when I lost everything. Captain Mendez took me under his wing. Taught me how he did what he did. And then when he died some years later, I took up his role. His cause—his calling—became mine.”

“Beta Aurigae is quite a distance from this moon. How did…” Kirk shrugged and let his question trail off as Anders took in a breath to answer.

“An engine imbalance created a wormhole. I'm afraid I don't know the technical details well, but we were unable to pull out from it until we found ourselves in this system. I was told it took selectively dismantling the warp engine while at warp to do it.”

“Your engineer—”

“Brilliant,” Anders said. “Died saving us.”

“How many survived?”

“Most survived the crash itself, but many died from their injuries or radiation burns we could not treat.” The older man shook his head, the lines on his face tracing an expression of deep regret. “I've seen a lot of death, Captain.” He seemed to snap himself out of whatever dark thought he'd had. “But I've also seen a fair number of births, and for that miracle I am grateful.”

Kirk instantly liked Anders and had some empathy for his difficult life. Which was why he didn't like the fact that he might be complicating it even more. “I have a problem,” Kirk told him. “And you need to know about it.”

And he told him: about the sabotage to the shuttle, the Klingon pursuers, and the possibility that while his first officer would surely find them soon, the Klingons might find them first.

“I've heard of the Klingons, of course,” Anders said soberly and pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes. “Rather fierce, if I remember.”

Fierce was an understatement, Kirk thought, remembering the hundreds and eventually thousands that would have died on Organia under Commander Kor's Klingon occupation…had any humanoids actually been on Organia.

“Are my people in danger, Captain?” Anders asked.

In a tone that Kirk hoped would bolster Anders's confidence that the situation wasn't as dire as Kirk had made it sound, he said, “Not if I can help it.”

Anders's brows knitted with concern. “That's not a direct answer.”

“They could be in danger,” Kirk admitted. “But it will take the Klingons some time to find us. We've shut down all power on the shuttle, and unless they have the scanners of a starship, they won't be able to find it unless they do low-altitude flyovers.”

Unconvinced, Anders's demeanor suddenly turned very captainlike. “I won't pretend to know the technology of your civilization, Captain, but I assume it's better than I remember that of my youth.”

“Somewhat.”

“Were I looking for someone who landed on a seemingly uninhabited planet, I'd scan for life-form readings,” Anders said pointedly.

Kirk nodded. “So would I.”

A frown deepened the lines on Anders's face. “And so will your Klingons.”

 

If Kirk had wanted to build a fort, the settlement he and Sulu had spent an hour surveying wasn't the place to do it. It was in an open area, near a large freshwater stream, and high ground flanked it on two sides.

“We can't defend this ground,” Sulu said as he and Kirk approached McCoy, who had been talking with Alexandria, the camp's doctor.

“But this is where the Klingons will come,” Kirk said. “Whether we're here or not.” Hand raised, motioning McCoy to them, the captain called for his doctor's report. “What do you think, Bones?”

McCoy strolled to them, a slight smile turning his lips. Kirk noticed there no longer were soot smudges from the shuttle “landing” and realized he must have taken the time to clean up. The captain wanted to do the same.

“These folk are in fairly good health, considering. It doesn't take long for natural selection to take over when you remove man's medicines and technologies. After fifty years here, the strongest are surviving.” He crooked his thumb toward Alexandria, who was now tending to one of the children's scrapes, though Kirk couldn't see any damage from where he was. It may have been more psychological care than physical.

“She's amazing,” McCoy said. “Trained by one of the doctors who eventually passed away. She's as good as any I've seen.”

“You sound ready to buy a plot of land and settle down,” Kirk said mischievously. “If you put out your shingle here, you'd ruin her business.”

“I could do worse than live here,” McCoy said. “A bit of a chill in the air, but it gets the blood going.”

“Yeah.” Blood. The word alone forced Kirk to think of the Klingons. He turned to Sulu. “Find Kerby. We're going to set up a watch, scanning with the tricorders.”

“How long do you think we have?” McCoy asked as Sulu walked off to where they'd last seen Kerby, who had been ordered to rest.

“Before the Klingons are here?” Kirk replied. “Or Spock?”

“Both.”

Rubbing his chin with his right thumb, Kirk's brows lifted and he gave a slight shrug. “Within a day. It's not when, but who arrives first that's the gamble.”

 

“Michael!” Anders stopped the younger man as he was trotting across the settlement grounds. “Have you seen Alexandria?”