Star Trek: The Rings of Time (6 page)

He was kidding, mostly. Although the asteroid belt contained thousands of microplanets, the matter was spread so thinly that the odds were a billion to one against the ship colliding with anything; over the last half-century, numerous unmanned probes had passed through the belt unscathed, and Shaun had every reason
to assume that the
Lewis & Clark
would do the same. Still, the ship’s LIDAR was on full alert for any potential hazards, and he and Fontana had agreed not to leave the cockpit unmanned until the ship was clear of the belt. They would be taking turns sleeping there for the next few weeks.

“Roger that,”
she said.
“You keep an eye on you-know-who.”

“Hi, Fontana!” Zoe shouted from the treadmill. “How you doing, girlfriend?”

Grimacing, the other woman cut off the trans-mission.

“You know, you really shouldn’t bait her like that,” Shaun said.

“Everybody needs a hobby.” She adjusted the straps digging into her shoulders in a vain attempt to relieve the pressure. Despite being short of breath, she kept on talking. “So, am I included in this crossing celebration? I gotta admit, I could use a drink, especially after fighting this torture device.”

“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “Why not? Provided you don’t try to blow up the ship between now and dinnertime.”

He wasn’t really worried about that anymore. NASA had checked out her story, and she appeared to be just what she claimed to be: an unusually nervy journalist out to make a name for herself. Over the last few weeks, he had been gradually letting her out of their improvised brig more often, for the sake of her health
and sanity. He wasn’t about to grant her free run of the ship anytime soon, but as long as she behaved herself, there was probably no need to keep her locked up all the time. She actually wasn’t bad company, although he suspected that his copilot felt otherwise.

“Fontana won’t object?”

“Undoubtedly,” Shaun predicted. Fontana had not yet warmed to Zoe; she still regarded the stowaway as an intruder. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

“Rank has its privileges, huh?”

“And seniority,” Shaun said. “These gray hairs must count for something.”

“Yeah, you’ve been at this game for some time now, haven’t you? I did my homework on all of you before I boarded this cruise, as it were. You’ve got quite an interesting résumé, Colonel Christopher.” She kept up a steady pace on the treadmill. Shaun could smell the rubber soles of her sneakers heating up from the friction. “Say, Skipper, at the risk of pushing my luck, do you mind if I ask you some questions about your illustrious career—including your stint at Area 51?”

Oh, boy,
he thought, going on alert.
Here it comes
. He’d been expecting this; it was a wonder that she had waited so long to bring it up.
Probably wanted to ingratiate herself first.

“That’s classified, and you know it.”

“Even after all these years? C’mon, Skipper. Throw me a bone. What else are we going to talk about the next umpteen million miles?”

“There’s not much to tell,” he lied. “If you must know, yes, I was assigned to the Groom Lake Facility, popularly known as Area 51, for a brief time back in the nineties, where I helped test experimental aircraft that I can’t really talk about. Not exactly the stuff of tabloid headlines.”

That wasn’t the whole story, of course. In fact, he had been assigned to the development and construction of the DY-100, an experimental “sleeper ship” employing advanced technology reverse-engineered from a crashed “Ferengi” spacecraft recovered in Roswell back in 1947. If all had gone well, Shaun might have piloted the DY-100 on its maiden voyage, but the prototype had mysteriously vanished in 1996 under circumstances that puzzled him to this day. His friend and colleague, Shannon O’Donnell, had taken the fall for the loss of the DY-100, effectively ending her NASA career, but he’d always suspected that there was more to the story than she had ever let on. Last he’d heard, she had been involved with the Millennium Gate project in Indiana, and the DY-100 project had been tabled indefinitely.
Maybe they’ll take those diagrams out of mothballs someday,
he thought,
if we pull this Saturn jaunt off without any more hitches.

He liked to think so.

“Why am I not buying this?” Zoe asked aloud. “You must have some good dirt from those days.”

“Sorry.” He tried to wave it off as if it was no big deal. “Believe me, Area 51 was not nearly as interesting
as the TV specials and conspiracy theorists make out.”

“No alien autopsies or captured spaceships?”

“‘Fraid not.” He tried to change the subject. “Although my dad sighted a UFO once, back in the sixties.”

“Really?” Zoe sounded intrigued. “How did I miss that?”

“Well, there’s not much to the story.” Shaun fingered the dog tags around his neck. “The Air Force picked up a UFO on radar and sent my dad up in a fighter jet to check it out. He thought he glimpsed something in the sky over Omaha, but then it was gone in a blink. To be honest, he’s still not sure whether he really saw something or not.”

“What do you think?” Zoe asked.

“Who knows? It
could
have been a visiting space-craft.”

As a kid, he had asked his dad to tell him about that UFO sighting over and over again; hell, it had probably helped inspire his lifelong interest in space travel. And his tour of duty at Area 51, years later, had certainly left Shaun open to the prospect of intelligent life from other worlds. He wasn’t about to dismiss what his dad had seen, however briefly, as just a trick of the light.

“Look at us,” he said, gesturing around at the cramped interior of the
Lewis & Clark,
which had been named after two legendary explorers. “We’re heading into space to see what—and who—might be out there. I have to imagine that other intelligent species are just as curious.”
He chuckled, just so she wouldn’t think he was too much of a UFO nut. “Not that I’m expecting to run into any little green men on this mission.”

“Or any sexy green girls?”

“Sadly, no,” Shaun said. “But I like the way your mind works.” He saw another way to divert the conversation away from Area 51. “I’ve been reading some of your blogs, by the way. NASA transmitted them to me—as part of their background check. It seems you have something of a cult following on the Internet.”

Zoe beamed, clearly flattered. “So, what did you think?”

“To be honest, they were a little far-out for my tastes.” He called up one of her online exposés on the computer terminal. “You really think Khan Noonien Singh is still alive?”

A notorious dictator, Khan had wielded consider-able power back in the nineties. At the height of his influence, he was said to have been the de facto ruler of large portions of India, South Asia, and the Middle East. He had been overthrown in ’96—about the same time the DY-100 had disappeared, come to think of it. That had been a pretty tumultuous year.

“Maybe. They never found his body, you know—at least, not that it could be reliably determined. What’s more, according to my research, some eighty of his closest advisers and followers remain unaccounted for.”

Shaun hadn’t heard that before. “Where do you
think they are? Tora Bora? A luxury estate in Kashmir?”

“Haven’t figured that out yet,” she admitted. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll find them waiting for us out by Saturn.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” he said. “Although you certainly have a vivid imagination, I’ll give you that.”

She grinned. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

The timer beeped.

“That’s it,” he announced. “You’re done for the day.”

“Thank God!” She switched off the treadmill and unhooked the harness. “My feet are killing me. They’re not used to supporting all that weight, you know.”

“Don’t remind me.” His feet always felt positively raw when he got on the treadmill. He traded places with Zoe and strapped himself in. Back in orbit around Earth, he had once jogged in place for a full ninety minutes, just so he could say that he had literally run around the entire planet. He flicked the treadmill on. It felt as if he was walking on a bed of nails.

And he still had an hour to go!

“Oh, my poor little piggies.” She peeled off her socks and sneakers. Floating free, she massaged her aching feet. “Hey, Skipper, since we’re finally opening up and all, mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“Not about Area 51, I hope.”

“Nah, although don’t think for a minute that I’ve given up on that angle.” She wiped off her sweaty face and limbs with a towel. “This is just for my own curiosity. Off the record.”

He started to pick up the pace. “Okay, shoot.”

“What’s the story with you and Fontana?”

Whoa!
He missed a step but quickly recovered. “What do you mean? We’re just colleagues, that’s all.”

Once again, that wasn’t entirely the truth. He and Alice had conducted a discreet affair more than a year ago, shortly after his divorce, but had broken things off before it could get in the way of the mission. Ever since the Lisa Nowak scandal of 2007, NASA had frowned on excessive “fraternization” between astronauts. No way would they have both been assigned to this mission had the higher-ups known about their prior relationship.

“Uh-huh. Right.” Zoe scrutinized the jogging astronaut. “I’ve been watching you two. There’s a definite vibe there. I’ve seen the way you look at each other when you think nobody’s looking and how awkward it is whenever you accidentally touch each other. ’Fess up, Skipper. You two practicing orbital maneuvers on the sly?”

Damn,
Shaun thought. He had to give her points for observational skills, not that he intended to share his private life with a nosy reporter. Off the record or not, that was between him and Fontana. “Like I said before, you have a vivid imagination.”

“But I also like to get my facts straight.” She deposited the towel in a sealed hamper. “Seriously, what’s the scoop? I mean, I know that the doc is happily married and all, but you really expect me to believe
that you and Fontana aren’t getting busy on this trip? It’s a long way to Saturn and back.”

Shaun hoped that zero g didn’t make blushing easier. He quickened his pace on the treadmill, hoping the exertion would disguise any telltale flushes. “We have plenty to occupy us, thank you very much. This is a scientific mission, not a pleasure cruise.” He tried to joke away the subject. “Besides, I’m holding out for one of those green girls you mentioned.”

“You might want to clear that with Fontana first. I’m not sure she would approve.”

Possibly not.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He adjusted the harness, which was already digging into his hips and shoulders. He had to be careful to avoid developing blisters and friction burns. “What about you? Hope you’re not counting on an alien abduction.”

“Nah. I’m not into ETs.” She drifted over to the window and gazed out at the void. “But let me know if we run into Khan. Tyrant or not, he was a hottie.”

“You’ll be the first to know,” he promised.

2270

“Impact in thirty-nine seconds, Captain.”

All eyes were focused on the viewer as a slab of ice the size of an adult Horta came zooming at the dome protecting the Skagway colony. The frozen missile was accompanied by a rain of smaller particles from the outer rings. Flashes of blue Cherenkov energy flared whenever a sizable chunk struck the colony’s fading shields. It looked like an old-fashioned fireworks display.

“Fire at will, Mr. Chekov.”

A pair of brilliant sapphire beams, unleashed by the
Enterprise
’s forward phaser banks, converged on the speeding slab. The directed energy blasts disintegrated the massive object, which glowed brightly before dissolving into atoms. Vaporized water dispersed into the vacuum.

“Bingo.” Sulu grinned at Chekov. “Right on target.”

“Good shooting,” Kirk agreed. “You’re proving quite the sharp-eyed marksman, Mr. Chekov.”

The young ensign shrugged modestly. “Sadly, I am getting rather too much practice.”

Tell me about it,
Kirk thought. The
Enterprise
had taken up a defensive position between Skagway and the crumbling rings of Klondike VI, where such exercises had become increasingly necessary. The colony’s own defenses were no longer sufficient to keep its population safe. More than a day had passed since the ship had arrived at Skagway, and the storms were getting worse by the hour. Fresh cracks and craters marred the battered surface of the moon. Anti-meteor phaser arrays had been smashed to pieces by the very hazards they’d been designed to fend off. The Yukon Gap was supposed to be relatively clear of the debris. The colony had not been designed to cope with a barrage of this magnitude. Even as Kirk watched, another slab of ice hit the moon’s uninhabited southern hemisphere. He guessed that the tremors could be felt from kilometers away.

The
Enterprise
was helping, but Kirk knew they were only buying time. As if the storms weren’t bad enough, Spock had confirmed that Skagway’s own orbit was deteriorating. The moon was doomed to spiral into the planet’s atmosphere—unless some manner of solution could be found.

“Shuttle approaching the
Enterprise,
” Uhura reported. “They’re requesting permission to come aboard.”

“Permission granted.” Kirk had been expecting this. Governor Dawson had promised to send her best person to consult with his crew. He activated his intercom. “Kirk
to landing bay, prepare for company.”

On the viewer, the shuttle could be seen flying through the storm. Debris buffeted the small vessel, but its shields appeared to be holding. Kirk didn’t envy the pilot.

“Keep an eye on that shuttle,” he instructed, not wanting it to get nailed by an iceberg-sized missile before it reached the
Enterprise
. “Make sure it gets through intact.”

“Aye, sir,” Chekov said. “I will watch over it like a guardian angel.”

“Just hang on to your halo, Ensign,” Kirk quipped as he rose from his chair. He wanted to greet the delegation personally. “Would you please accompany me, Mr. Spock? I’m sure our guest would appreciate your scientific input.”