Strange New Worlds 2016

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S
TAR
T
REK
®

T
HE
O
RIGINAL
S
ERIES

D
ILITHIUM
I
S A
G
IRL
’
S
B
EST
 F
RIEND

Neil Bryant

“I
T
’
S THE DEATH PENALTY
if we’re caught.”

“We won’t get caught. You have me word on that, lass.”

“Your word isn’t worth shit, Harry. The whole quadrant knows it. And you can drop
the damn Leo Walsh act. I know who you really are.” Eve McHuron stared daggers at
the plump, sagging figure standing on the other side of her alvera-wood desk—a gift
from the Kreetassan Assembly. It had been a tremendous display of generosity on their
part; Kreetassans didn’t part with trees easily. She loved the rich, dark color and
smooth, mirrorlike finish. It was elegant, refined—the polar opposite of the sack
of potatoes standing across from it. Oh, there’d been a time she’d seen him differently.
Back when she was younger—much younger—she’d been captivated by his many personas
and devil-may-care attitude. He’d seemed dashing and debonair. But in the end, Harcourt
“Harry” Fenton Mudd had turned out to be nothing more than a second-rate con man.
She hadn’t seen him in twenty years. Since then, his trademark mustache had turned
gray, and the points into which it curved weren’t so neat and precise anymore. With
his puffy, open-chested orange shirt and brown safari hat, he looked ridiculous, a
walking, talking caricature of his old self. Worse yet, they were the same clothes
he’d worn decades ago, old and ragged and mended by hand. How could one be in need
of clothing in a society where basic needs were provided for? Had Harry worn out his
welcome in so many places that he couldn’t even come by a decent new getup anymore?

Harry removed his hat and took it between both hands in front of his broad chest.
There was even less hair on his head than she remembered, and what was left of it
was grayer than the mustache. His eyes darted around the room of polished stone tiles
inset with Rigellian flamegems, perhaps realizing the woman who occupied it was not
the same Eve McHuron he’d left behind on Rigel XII decades ago, but one who could
buy and sell him many times over. He looked so small and helpless. More than that,
he looked tired. It was the kind of weariness that comes from being forced to move
from place to place, alone and without a home to call one’s own. His once energetic
brown eyes that had been always shifting, always looking for their next mark, were
drained. She felt a pang of pity in her chest.
How could that be?
How could she possibly feel sorry for him—the man who’d trafficked her around the
galaxy and pumped her full of that damn Venus beauty drug to make her more marketable?

“Please, Evey, dear. Just hear me out,” pleaded Harry. She wasn’t fond of being called
Evey, but she would indulge him rather than continuing to strip away what little self-respect
he was clinging to late in life. “It’s been centuries at least since the Federation
last executed anyone. They’re bluffing. In fact, there was a time when going to Talos
IV was supposedly punishable by death until me ol’ friend Jimmy Kirk—”

“Your old
friend
?” Eve interrupted with a joyless cackle right as Harry was settling back into his
Leo Walsh persona. “I doubt he remembers it that way.”

“That’s not the point,” growled Harry, his Irish brogue again disappearing. His eyes
began fluttering like they did whenever he was frustrated. “The point is, Kirk and
Spock went to Talos IV, and when they returned, not only did they avoid being hanged
at the nearest starbase, they were absolved from any wrongdoing. I even heard they
were commended for risking so much on behalf of their old commanding officer.”

“But we’re not talking about Talos IV. What you want is much more dangerous. I know,
I’ve seen it.”

“So you
do
have it?”

“Yes,” she said, soft as a whisper. She turned to look out the window, away from Harry.
He was a liar, a cheat, and a swindler, but he was right about the Federation. The
death penalty threat was a bluff. They weren’t in the business of killing people.
But they can take away everything Ben and I have built here
, she thought. On the other side of the window, a mass of asteroids—prime candidates
for hypersonic element deposits—turned and drifted leisurely through space. She reached
up and brushed her fingers across the dilithium jewels that adorned her ears. The
earrings were her sole decorative indulgence at work. She wore the same gray jumpsuit
her workers wore. Her long hair, which had managed to stay blond even after all these
years, cascaded over her right shoulder. “How did you know I had it?”

“Call it an educated guess,” Harry said with an annoyingly pretentious smile. “Believe
it or not, I still have connections. I heard about your meeting with Doctor Marcus.
From there, it was a simple matter of putting two and two together. She was looking
for a lifeless planet as a test bed for her project, and who better to ask than the
woman who’d mined more hellhole worlds than anyone else in the quadrant?”

Eve scoffed. “If you’re in the loop enough to know about my meetings with Carol Marcus,
you should know Genesis was a colossal failure. It got her son killed. It almost fell
into the hands of a madman. It scared the Klingons enough that they were willing to
risk war. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, the planet exploded. Even Doctor Marcus
and her team have abandoned the project.”

“My buyer doesn’t care about the failures.”

Eve spun around and gave Harry the sternest look in her arsenal. “That should terrify
you, Harry. Genesis’s only value at this point is as a weapon. It can destroy all
life on a planet in an instant.”

“It’s not like that.” Harry put on his best salesman’s smile. “My buyer wants to study
Genesis and work out the bugs, so to speak. Even if he fails, he would never use it
as a weapon. His intentions are perfectly honorable and noble.”

Eve’s brow unfurled. “How can you be sure?”

“He comes from a planet whose star is dying. They’re looking to save it and preserve
their entire civilization before it’s too late. Genesis can help.”

“Why doesn’t he go through Federation channels and seek help from Starfleet?”

“Evey, dear. You of all people should know how slowly the wheels of Federation bureaucracy
can turn. Think about how long you wait to get a mere mining permit, and then imagine
trying to move an entire civilization. The poor saps could be dead by then.”

For all his faults, Harry was great at using moral conundrums to get what he wanted.
It was possible this whole thing was another con, put on by Harry or his buyer. But
what if he was being truthful? Could she risk denying him Genesis when an entire civilization
was at stake? On the other hand, could she risk putting Genesis in the hands of another
Khan Noonien Singh and leaving God knows how many civilizations at risk? And then
there was Ben’s legacy to think about. “If your ‘old friend Jimmy Kirk’ lost his admiralship
just for visiting the planet, can you imagine what they’d do to us? Even if they don’t
hang us at the nearest starbase, we could lose everything.”

Harry let out a boisterous laugh.
Was he actually laughing at her?
She felt a surge of heat in her gut, and her hands clenched into fists. Back on Rigel
XII, this kind of anger would’ve sent her out crying into some godforsaken dust storm,
but she was a different person now. “What’s so damn funny, Harry? You better give
me an answer I like, or I’m kicking your fat ass out the nearest docking port, ship
or no ship.”

His laughter immediately ceased. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you’ve accomplished more
than I ever have or will. Yet, you’re still so beautifully naïve about how the universe
works. Have you thought about how you ended up here—CEO of Childress Drilling?”

“Ben died,” Eve said plainly. She’d dealt with the pain and loss years ago, and she
wasn’t one who looked back.

“It’s more than that. Like most people who do more for humanity than they know, you
can’t see how important you truly are.” He leaned in, placing his palms flat atop
the desk and staring straight into her eyes. His voice became low and serious. “You’re
the rarest resource, Evey. The one that can’t be replaced. That’s why the Federation
wouldn’t touch you, whether you believe it or not.”

Eve shook her head in confusion.
What the devil was he talking about?
There was nothing special about her. She was just a miner—a very successful one, mind
you—but just a miner nonetheless. “I have no idea what you’re getting at.”

“I know you don’t, love, but you were absolutely right about what you said earlier.
My word is worth nothing, and the entire quadrant knows it. This little errand is
my last chance to earn enough so I can retire, fade away into obscurity.”

She knew she should kick him out right now. She should’ve sent him packing the moment
he arrived at her station, but there was the sprout of pity in her chest again, like
a weed she couldn’t kill. “Fine. I’ll give you what you want.”

“Excellent,” beamed Harry. “Thank—”

“Under one condition,” interrupted Eve.

Harry sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. “Which is?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“How do you get anywhere in this piece of junk?” Eve asked as she took a seat next
to Harry on the bridge of the
Stella Signata
, probably named for his ex-wife. The impulse engines whined in a way she knew did
not indicate optimal function. There were numerous scorch marks on the bulkheads,
deck plates, and control stations where fires had erupted and the damage had been
only partially repaired. There were exposed circuit panels and conduits that, much
to Eve’s surprise, were using lithium circuits.
Who the hell still used lithium circuits?
Spacefaring vessels had transitioned to total dilithium dependence decades ago.
This ship must be older than the Federation
, thought Eve.

“Age is but a number, my dear,” quipped Harry. “It gets me where I need to go.”

He navigated through the mass of drifting rock, making his way toward open space where
he could safely engage the warp engines. The asteroids sparked and shimmered against
the blackness of space as phaser drills worked on their rocky surfaces. Workbees and
men in pressure suits tended to the mining equipment. Even though Eve was older now
than when she’d started the company, she never missed an opportunity to get behind
the controls of a ’bee alongside her workers. Once a miner, always a miner. This asteroid
field was one of many sites operated by Childress Drilling, the mining company she
and Ben had built from the ground up. It carried his name due to the reputation he’d
earned and connections he’d made as a lithium miner so many years ago. Childress specialized
in extracting the hypersonic elements necessary for starship function—a dangerous
but lucrative task that couldn’t be fully automated. Dilithium comprised ninety-five
percent of her business and had made her a very rich woman in a society where wealth
inequality had supposedly been eliminated. Although the company still carried Ben’s
name, she was the sole owner now. He’d died years ago when a phaser drill he was repairing
exploded.

As the outermost asteroids passed by on the main viewer, Harry set a course for his
buyer’s destination and engaged the warp engines. Eve caught a glimpse of the coordinates
on the navigational display.

“You weren’t kidding when you said no one in the entire quadrant trusted you anymore.
That’s the Phocis Harju system. That’s near the Beta Quadrant. Your buyer lives on
the outskirts of Federation space.”

“I don’t know if he lives there, or if he’s trying to keep away from prying eyes.
In my line of work, you learn not to ask too many questions,” said Harry impatiently.
“Can I at least see the package now?”

Eve put her discomfort over the remoteness of the location aside, and reached into
the breast pocket of her jumpsuit. She pulled out a rectangular data storage crystal.
Harry’s beady eyes fixed on it and gleamed in a way Eve knew all too well. His tongue
pushed out of his mouth and made a slow horizontal motion across his bottom lip. His
right hand was twitching.