Star Trek: The Rings of Time (26 page)

“So, Fontana really thinks you’re an impostor?” Zoe asked. She seemed bemused to find him sharing her cell.

He shrugged. “A minor misunderstanding.”

“Boy, I knew she was paranoid, but this takes the cake.”

He felt obliged to defend Fontana, who was just trying to protect her ship from an apparent intruder. He would have acted the same way as he had whenever an alien intelligence had possessed a member of his crew. The safety of the ship and other crew members always came first.

“She seems to think that I’ve changed since my encounter with the probe.”

“Well, duh,” Zoe said, floating freely around the compartment. “You had a close encounter with a genuine alien artifact and nearly got fried in the process. An experience like that is bound to have an impact on somebody. How couldn’t it?”

Kirk wished he had thought of that argument, not that it explained his memory lapses. “Did you notice a difference, too?”

“Absolutely. You seemed more . . . mysterious somehow, like you were hiding something important. It made you more interesting, to be honest, not to mention a good deal sexier.” She winked at him. “You know me, I love a mystery.”

So I gather.
He remembered Zoe coming on to him shortly after he found himself aboard the
Lewis & Clark
. Had she picked up on the fact that he was guarding forbidden secrets? No doubt that would be catnip to an inquisitive journalist like her. Apparently, the real Shaun had not been nearly so tempting an enigma.

“I’m not sure Fontana feels the same way. I don’t suppose you’d care to explain that to her?”

“Talk sense to that green-eyed monster?” Zoe snorted at the notion. “Like she would ever listen to me, especially now.”

He had to agree. “Then it seems I’m here for the duration.”

“Sucks for you,” she said. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I appreciate the company . . . and how.”

She pushed off from the ceiling, launching herself toward him.

Kirk made no effort to avoid her but nodded at the closed-circuit camera monitoring the interior of the airlock. “Don’t forget. We have an audience.”

“No problem.” She peeled off her tank top and draped it over the lens of the camera. “Let them get their cheap thrills elsewhere.” She held her arms out, inviting him in. “C’mon, Skipper. I don’t know about you, but I could use a little human warmth right now.”

Kirk gazed at her enticing face and figure. Fontana had been right about another thing: he did find Zoe extremely attractive. He still wasn’t sure what Shaun would do right then, but maybe that didn’t matter so much anymore. He was already under arrest on suspicion of being an alien body snatcher; perhaps he might as well take advantage of the situation and Zoe’s generous charms.

“You know,” he said, “they’re going to notice that the video feed has been obstructed.”

“Then let’s not waste time.”

They embraced in midair, clinging to each other to keep from rebounding apart. Her taut, compact body molded to his as their lips found each other’s. Locked together, they tumbled about the airlock, occasionally bouncing off the walls and ceiling. They were going to have some interesting bruises afterward, but it seemed more
than worth it. Their hands busily explored exciting new life-forms. Kirk wondered just how much time they had.

A sudden burst of acceleration threw them against the outer hatch. Kirk’s back took the impact, and his body cushioned Zoe. Their lips came apart, and they stared at each other in surprise.

“Whoa! Did you feel that?” she asked. “I mean, I knew I was good, but—”

“We’re breaking orbit,” he said, concerned by the unexpected jolt. The ship wasn’t scheduled to start its return voyage for another twelve hours or so. “This shouldn’t be happening.”

Zoe got the message and stopped fooling around. “Okay, that doesn’t sound good.”

Letting go of her, he flew across the compartment to the video-com. “Fontana! O’Herlihy! What’s happening up there?”

O’Herlihy’s face appeared on the screen. He looked sweaty and distraught, as if he was cracking under the pressure. His eyes were bloodshot. His hair needed combing. Kirk was reminded of Ben Finney—after his breakdown.

“I’m sorry, Shaun, if that’s who you truly are. Alice can’t speak to you right now. I’ve taken control of the ship . . . for what little time we have left.”

Kirk realized at once that the scientist had gone rogue somehow. “Where is Fontana?” he demanded. “What have you done with her?”

“She’s fine,”
the doctor said.
“I just gave her something to sleep, that’s all. It was necessary. I couldn’t have her interfering with . . . what has to happen now.”

“What do you mean?” Kirk asked. “What are you up to?”

“I suppose you deserve the truth, both of you
.” O’Herlihy looked positively consumed by guilt.
“The
Lewis & Clark
is not returning home. I’ve set a new course. I’m using up all of our thruster fuel to send us spiraling into the planet in a matter of hours. We should get going fast enough to pass through the rings a few more times before we finally crash into Saturn itself.”

Kirk’s blood went cold. O’Herlihy was talking about a suicide run. Even in his own time, no vessel could survive a plunge into the heart of a gas giant. The titanic pressures would eventually crush the ship like a paper plane in a hurricane. And the
Lewis & Clark
didn’t even have a structural-integrity field.

“That’s insane! You’re going to kill us all.”

“You think I don’t know that?”
Anguish contorted O’Herlihy’s face.
“You don’t understand. I don’t have any choice!”

“But why, Marcus? You can’t condemn us to death without telling us why!”

“It’s my daughter!”
he said, sobbing.
“My precious Tera. They’re going to kill her if I don’t!”

Kirk had seen pictures of Tera O’Herlihy. She was a lovely
young woman in her early twenties. Her father had always seemed very proud of her.

“Who is, Marcus? Who is threatening her?”

“HEL,
” he admitted.
“The Human Extinction League. She got mixed up with them in college, and now they’re holding her hostage. They demanded that I sabotage the mission, create a disaster that would ‘teach the world a lesson’ about the folly of spreading humanity to the stars, or they would torture her to death.”
He was shaking now, his voice hoarse with emotion.
“You have to understand. She’s my only child, my baby. I couldn’t let that happen to her!”

Kirk got the idea. Looking back, he recalled how emotional the doctor had been at times, especially when the subject of his family had come up. Kirk had ascribed that to simple homesickness, but obviously, there had been a lot more going on beneath the man’s cool, avuncular demeanor. Small wonder O’Herlihy had choked up on occasion; Kirk could only imagine the strain he had been under.

None of which made their current situation any less perilous.

“You started the fire,” Kirk realized. “Not Zoe.”

“Yes. I stalled as long as I could, wanting to get as much science accomplished as possible, but HEL was getting impatient. They were sending coded messages to me via my wife’s e-mails, and they wanted results. I had to do something to keep them from hurting Tera.”
The revelations poured out of him, as though he felt a need to confess.
“I thought that maybe if I died in the fire, that
would be enough to satisfy them, but I see now that I was just fooling myself. They won’t be happy unless this entire mission crashes and burns in a way that can’t possibly be covered up. I have to destroy the ship. That’s the only way to make sure that Tera is safe.”

Kirk tried to reason with him. “But you can’t sacrifice four lives for one. There must be another way. Perhaps if we notify the authorities back on Earth?”

“No! I can’t take that chance. I’m sorry, but this is my baby we’re talking about.”
He wiped his eyes, trying to regain his composure. His voice had a resigned, fatalistic tone that worried Kirk more than any emotional outbursts. He had clearly made up his mind.
“We’re astronauts,
” he rationalized.
“We always knew we might not come back.”
He reached for the comm controls.
“Good-bye, Shaun, Zoe.”

“Wait!” Zoe cried out before he could cut off the transmission. “How much time do we have?”

“Approximately five hours,”
he said,
“depending on how long it takes the planet’s internal pressure to crush us. If it’s any consolation, we’re taking the scenic route to gather as much scientific data as possible before the end, passing through the rings themselves. I intend to keep transmitting our findings back to Earth for as long as possible. No matter what happens to us, we won’t have died in vain. We will have carried out our mission and increased humanity’s knowledge of the universe. Not a bad legacy to leave behind.”

“A noble sentiment, Doctor,” Kirk retorted, “but I would prefer to live, too.”

“Ditto,” Zoe chimed in. “What he said.”

“I’m sorry,”
O’Herlihy said sadly.
“I’m afraid that’s the only comfort I have to give. Please forgive me.”

He switched off the comm.

2270

A bowl of hot chicken soup and a cup of coffee appeared on a tray in the food slot. Shaun sampled the soup, which was just the way he liked it, not too salty. He had to admit that the food service aboard the
Enterprise
definitely beat the prepackaged NASA cuisine back on his old ship. So far, the starship’s galley had been able to produce almost every form of comfort food he had asked for, from root beer floats to sushi. There even appeared to be some exotic alien dishes on the menu.

Okay,
he conceded.
I could get used to this.

He started to carry the tray over to a waiting desk, despite the turbulence shaking the ship. It felt as if the
Enterprise
was in the middle of an outer-space hurricane—or a battle? A red alert light flashed above the locked doorway, and Shaun wished he knew what was going on. He gathered from what he had overheard before that the ship had been taking on refugees. But refugees from what?

The unsteady floor made it hard to keep his balance. Hot soup sloshed over the lip of the bowl, scalding his fingers. “Crap!” Shaun swore.

Maybe I should have ordered pizza instead.

A warning siren blared, and he almost jumped out of his (Kirk’s) skin. An urgent voice came over the intercom system.

“All hands and passengers! Brace for impact!”

Although well intentioned, the warning came too late. A deafening jolt flipped the ship over on its axis, too fast for its internal gyros or whatever to compensate. Shaun was thrown across the room into the ceiling. The food tray flew from his fingers. The cup, bowl, and cutlery clattered loudly. Soup and coffee splashed against the walls and ceiling.

“What the—?”

The ship completed a full rotation, righting itself. Shaun landed hard on the floor, only a yard away from his bed. Stunned, he scrambled to his feet and glanced around. Years of NASA training kicked in as he hurriedly attempted to assess the situation.

Whatever had just hit the
Enterprise
had done a real number on the ship. The overhead lights flickered and went out, momentarily stranding him in darkness, before the emergency lights came on. Klaxons blared outside sickbay. Sparks erupted from the diagnostic screen above the bed, forcing him to throw up his arm to protect his eyes. Charred fragments rained onto the bed. The acrid smell of smoke and burning circuitry contaminated the air. Even the artificial gravity wobbled, causing his stomach to turn over queasily. The possibility of a hull breach—every astronaut’s worst nightmare—forced its way into his brain, but
there was no evidence of explosive decompression. If a breach had occurred elsewhere on the ship, perhaps it had already been sealed off. He had to assume that the
Enterprise
had the capacity to isolate any compromised sections of the ship. It would be insane to build any sort of spacecraft that couldn’t.

They surely have their safety procedures, backups, and fail-safes,
he reminded himself.
I have to assume that they’re prepared to handle any emergency.

But that didn’t make being in the dark any easier.

A wet noodle dropped onto his sleeve. He looked up to see spilled soup and coffee dripping from the ceiling. He stepped out of the way, only to see the drops stop falling. Glistening round globules began to float above his head. His stomach flipped over again. Loose pillows, silverware, notepads, noodles, and bite-sized morsels of chicken floated freely through the room. His feet lost their grip on the floor.

So much for the artificial gravity
.

All of a sudden, he felt as if he was back on the
Lewis & Clark,
but that wasn’t even the most interesting development. The sliding door began to malfunction, too, opening and closing at random. Peering through the gap, he caught periodic glimpses of the rest of sickbay.

And freedom.

His eyes narrowed. A sly smile came over his face. Sure, he remembered Dr. McCoy explaining that he couldn’t
see too much of the future, and for a moment, he even considered staying put for the sake of the “timeline.”

Then he shook his head.

Screw that,
he thought. He’d been locked up in solitary long enough, and he wasn’t about to float around doing nothing while all hell was apparently breaking loose. He needed to find out what was going on. Besides, who said they were ever really going to put him back where he belonged? They sure hadn’t seemed in any hurry to get him home. Maybe McCoy had been feeding him a line of bull this whole time.

There was only one way to find out.

He studied the door’s spastic openings and closings until he thought he had the timing down. He couldn’t delay too long; McCoy or Chapel or somebody might come checking on him at any moment, although he was hoping they had their hands full elsewhere. Shaun decided that he was ready. Bracing himself against the foot of the bed, he tensed his leg muscles, glad that Kirk had apparently gotten plenty of exercise. He counted down the seconds.