Wagon Train to the Stars (Star Trek No 89, New Earth Book One of Six) - Softcover

Carey, Diane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671042963 ISBN 13: 9780671042967

Publisher: Star Trek, 2000

Synopsis

After saving Earth from the threat of V'Ger, James T. Kirk is called again to the final frontier. His new mission: to lead a valiant group of settlers to a distant world, to defend the struggling colony from alien threats, and to explore the diverse mysteries and dangers of a strange new Earth! Far from the Federation, a newly discovered M-class world has been eyed as a potential home by a group of hardy and determined colonists. Star?eet can spare only one starship to escort the would-be settlers on their perilous voyage, but that ship is none other than the legendary Starship Enterprise™, commanded by the most well-known captain in the quadrant. Now Kirk finds himself responsible for the lives of 30,000 men, women, and children -- a task that grows all the more difficult when the expedition is caught in the middle of an ancient feud between two dangerous alien races!

About this title

About the Author:

Diane Carey is the author of the bestselling INVASION!:FIRST STRIKE and numerous other Star Trek novels including episode tie-ins from The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, amongst them THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR, TRIALS AND TRIBBLEATIONS and WHAT YOU LEAVE BEHIND (all DS9), both DS9 volumes of the bestselling DOMINION WAR quartet, EQUINOX and ENDGAME (both Voyager).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One

Distant night, the most distant. Today, a giant's finger of tractless lingering haze dusted space deep cobalt blue, painting the otherwise ink matte of weeks past. Everything changed day by day, even space itself.

Or perhaps it was only anger.

Prowling the central command deck, surrounded by a raised walkway that supported all the consoles and monitors that showed him the universe, Captain James Kirk bedeviled his starship's forward viewscreen with a punitive glare, as if he could mentally brutalize what he saw into submission.

"Red alert," he ordered, "again."

"Captain," Lieutenant Commander Uhura broached from the communications post, "we never stood down from the previous one."

Kirk ignored her. "Get the owner over here right now. Sulu, detonate those shots."

"Trying, sir."

The starship's bridge pulsed with activity. Colored lights winked, and soft mechanical noises sang in the background, a self-driven symphony of never-ending background music that could seem either comforting or nerve-racking, depending upon the construction of any given peace or panic.

Today, Kirk let his nerves go ahead and rack. Somehow it was a message from the ship that she would act out his will, that he was still in charge.

"Mr. Spock," he asked, "is that drone automated or manned?"

On the upper deck walkway, watching the main screen like a cat on the hunt, the starship's first officer was as much comfort as Kirk would get on this mission. Sharp-eyed and dynamic, standing out on a bridge otherwise manned by humans, the Vulcan posed a narrow form particularly imperial in the new Starfleet colors of brick and black. His slick black hair, cut in the style of banks and points that now was famous in the Federation, caught a band of light from the red-alert beacon, which also framed the triangle of his left ear as he turned. "We're not certain whether it's manned, sir. Sensors pick up no life signs, but may be fouled by the industrial machinery on board. Some of Mrs. Webb's factory ships do have security guards stationed with sensitive data files."

"Then we can't blow it up -- yet. Invasive maneuvers, Mr. Sulu, get between that drone and Oregon Trail. Double shields port, right now."

"Port double shields, aye," the steady helmsman answered. Kirk was glad Sulu had come on this mission. Even though the course was essentially straight out into the middle of nowhere at noteworthy speeds, the helm at the hands of Hikaru Sulu somehow behaved just a thought better than at anyone else's.

The reassuring repeat of orders gave a sense of control to an uncontrolled situation. The starship moved forward through a magnificent funnel of spacefaring ships, every size and construction, that now moved aside for her. The view from here was eerie -- dozens after dozens of ships flooding past, heading back as the starship headed forward. At the helm, Commander Sulu hammered coordinates and traffic directions into his computer console, sweeping the flotilla away from the danger point.

Though only a few seconds of pause lay before him, Kirk stole those moments to commune silently with the great entourage of ships he was here to lead. Huge Conestoga-class dormitory ships, with their bird-beak bows and bulbous living sections, plowed past with deceiving grace, each pushed by brilliantly conceived devices designed just for this journey by Engineer Scott -- two detachable "mule" engines, huge rocks of unadorned muscle that could tow or push at fantastic ratios. Thus driven, the big people-mover ships were incarnations of the first iron horses steaming out toward treacherous frontiers, over scorching deserts, windy plains, and frozen mountains, hoping they'd make it to the other side.

Sprinkled among the Conestogas were private yachts, tenders, industrial drones, the mercy ship, the garden ship, the governor's VIP transport...What a sight. More than seventy ships, clustered in one area of space. Even after five months in space, it was shocking to look at them all, moving together in a great flock. Kirk was used to being in space, but alone out here, with his one powerful vessel, and the family of crew. Though the crew of four hundred had always seemed bulky as ships' complements went, Kirk had found new epiphanies in the past months, leading a convoy of over sixty-four thousand colonists to a promised land -- a land they had promised to themselves and were determined to settle, a dream they themselves had conjured and hammered into shape.

Here came the coroner ship, sedate and dignified in its promise to do whatever sad jobs came its way. Kirk tried to ignore the passing of Twilight Sentinel, but her presence off his starship's port bow jolted him back to the cold fact that he was facing a tragedy in the making and if he made the wrong decision, that ship would be full of bodies.

He pressed his hands to his command chair and pushed to his feet as the privateer ship Hunter's Moon slid past, her scratched black and green dazzlepainted hull gliding by at what seemed like arm's length. There, in the open space as the privateer cleared the viewscreen, was the tortured Conestoga Oregon Trail, being assaulted by a drone ship that had lost its mind. The functional-ugly drone, with its retractable docking claws all out, clutched at the Conestoga like a headless insect. Its flashes of torch phasers, several time brighter than they should be, crashed across the hulls of both free-floating vessels. Sparks danced into space, clouding the view. If those torches cut through the Conestoga's hide, this malfunction could quickly become a disaster.

Around him, the starship's refitted bridge glowed with the scarlet hue of red alert. In his misty mind, Kirk sometimes expected to see this place as it once had been, with its rows of etched black screens, the red rail, muted carpet, and grade-school colors that had seemed so crisp and happy. The refit had made the bridge more technical, more cold and metallic, but under the skin she murmured to him that she was still that old ship of his many adventures, the sturdy grand dame that had serviced the Federation so dependably. She recognized him despite the change, and he felt more at home by the hour.

At the engineering post, the convoy's senior engineer, Montgomery Scott, turned his iron-gray head and looked at the drone ship on the main screen harassing the Conestoga. Irritably he reported, "That damned box has sealed all its hatches now, sir. The hull's electrified and it keeps evading grapples. Nobody can get inside while the shields are up. The thing's gone completely raving."

Spock turned again. "Captain, I estimate eleven minutes to critical overload of those industrial phasers at this enhancement level."

Kirk flattened his lips. "Nothing compared to what'll happen when I get my hands on whoever enhanced them. Ah -- Captain Kilkenny."

"Kilvennan," came the correction. "Michael."

On the upper deck, just coming out of the turbolift, was one of the privateer captains, in fact the captain of Hunter's Moon, which had just sailed past. Escorted by Lieutenant Chekov, with shaggy long hair and a musketeer beard, Michael Kilvennan was everything James Kirk imagined the captain of folklore to be -- a mold that, ironically, he had never quite fit. Kilvennan wore a brown turtleneck and a belted sheepskin vest, setting him instantly apart from the starship's crew in their fitted blood-red uniform jackets and black trousers. In fact, the privateer captain looked uneasy standing next to the perpetually tidy Chekov.

"You better have a word with Mr. Chekov here," the privateer demanded. "Beaming me off my ship without permission -- "

"We don't have time for permission, Captain," Kirk told him sharply. "And I have emergency authority." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the scene on the main viewer. "That one of your drones?"

"My mother runs the line of trailing industrial drones," Kilvennan confirmed, watching the action before them in space. "Helen Kilvennan Webb. She works on the CP Crystobel, but our family lives on the Yukon. She's the one who should be here. Those drones trail after the commercial pilot -- "

"Like little ducks," Kirk nodded. "You'll do for now. Yukon's under medical quarantine."

"I'll 'do'? Just because Mr. Chekov's handling Expedition security doesn't mean he gets to yank people off their own ships and haul them around the fleet."

"Yes, it does. Your mother's drone is attacking one of our passenger ships. I need to know what's on it right now and whether I'm free to destroy it if I have to."

Kilvennan scowled. "Who cares what's on it? Blow the damned thing up!"

A voice entered the argument from the upper deck. "Captain, you can't!"

Kirk turned -- so did everybody -- to the future colony's young governor as he raised a hand from where he stood next to Scott. An idealist's idealist, Evan Pardonnet was a man for whom youth provided a shield against the digs that picked away at beliefs and dreams. He had planned this massive one-stroke colonial movement, overlorded its every development, and bristled at the Federation's inclusion of Starfleet into the mix at the last minute. James Kirk had cast away his mantle of admiralty and once again put on a captain's hat, and accepted command of the Starship Enterprise to go into deep space, escorting and guarding the greatest colonial project in United Federation of Planets history.

Easy on the drawing board. Reality was a picker bush. For five months Kirk and Pardonnet had wrestled over who had authority to do what. In a crisis situation, should the colonists look to their fleet captain, or to their governor? Was there time for a committee meeting? The governor now argued his point in his usual way -- passionately.

"Mrs. Webb's line of drones," he protested, "is manufacturing things we'll need almost immediately to set up a decent first year on Belle Terre! We've got to protect it!"

"Blow it up," the owner's son repeated. Kilvennan seemed relaxed, but his eyes were fixed on the ghastly scene playing out in space, the drone ship carving plates off the Oregon Trail's weakening blue side. "Webb Three's a manufacturing plant making subassemblies for industrial goods. Kitchenware, that's all -- "

"Our ovens, ranges, refrigeration units!" The governor clenched and unclenched his hands until his palms were red. "Filtration systems, hydrators, dehydrators, waste-recyclers -- we need those, Captain Kirk!"

But Kilvennan stood his ground. "What good's that stuff if you let it kill three thousand colonists?"

Kirk swung to him. "What kind of phasers has that thing got, Kilvennan?"

"Ah...level-six cutting torches, I think -- "

"How'd they get up to level three?"

Pulling his hands from his pockets, Kilvennan bumped forward against the bridge rail. "Level three! That's impossible!"

"You're looking at it."

"Those are supposed to be level-six industrials, defensive at short range to deflect meteors! Cutting phasers, that's all!"

"Captain Kilvennan," Spock interrupted, "if your mother's had her phasers enhanced, she's in violation of Belle Terre Colonial Expedition statutes."

"And," Kirk firmly finished, "she'll be held criminally responsible for any deaths caused by that drone."

Kilvennan met him with a gale-force glare. "Who in hell do you think you are, making a charge like that? If those phasers are enhanced, they'll overload! Don't you think we know that?"

Meeting the other captain's anger point for point, Kirk snarled, "Is there any living person on board? Anyone at all?"

"Nobody. Webb Three, Four, Six, and Nine are all completely automated. My parents run them by telemetry from the CP."

At the comm station, Uhura had her hand to her earpiece. "Sir, Captain Briggs is hailing from the Tugantine. Should he move in with Norfolk Rebel and pry that drone off the Conestoga?"

"Not even the Tugantine's engines could break that drone's tractors," Kirk calculated. "Not under fire, anyway. Tell him to stand by."

Scott poked at his engineering controls and scowled. "The drone's tractored itself directly to the Conestoga's hull, sir. There's not two inches between them now."

Irreconcilably prowling the command deck, Kirk seized the problem and applied his pure will to it. The chilling sight of the factory drone chewing at a ship with three thousand passengers on board -- they might as well have been watching a cougar gnaw the leg of an elephant. Was there anything more frightening than a machine that had lost its mind?

Even through the gap of space between him and the Conestoga, he sensed the shrieks of fear, the huddling in horror, the confusion and desperation aboard that dormitory ship. He felt in his bones the painful thrumming of vibration from attack as it ran through the skin of the ship and up through the feet of those people and into their shuddering limbs. They were scared. He felt that. They needed him. He felt that too.

The bridge was all lit up with "windows" out to space. He saw all that was around them, all the ships of the Belle Terre Colonial Expedition, the thousands of civilians standing side by side with their spouses and children, watching what he would do next to save their neighbors, depending on him and judging him based upon the coming few minutes.

He hated an audience. Missions could be handled. Shows were messy.

Were they all thinking about the good old Earth they'd left behind, sinking into a gemlike backdrop, likely never to be seen again? Or were their minds on the planet they were heading toward, another Earth with clear skies and gleaming oceans, continents flushed as if they'd just been kissed?

Kirk was jolted as the last few ships cleared the way. The Conestoga Lakota, with her warp mule engines driving like Hadrian's elephants. The industrial ship Macedon towing an iceberg -- their water source in space. The huge Olympian, repository for thousands of micro-scaffolds growing body parts for cryo-freeze. The coroner ship Twilight Sentinel with her elegant purple hull and white lights, the dairy barge loaded with real cattle and real cowboys. Wreckmaster Briggs moving his Tugantine out of the way. Finally the Starfleet combat support tender Beowulf skimmed past the starship and flashed her running lights in a good-luck salute.

Beowulf was the last of the Expedition ships blocking the way. Now the Conestoga Oregon Trail and her bulldog attacker stood alone on the vista of space, glowing in the airbrushed light of a sun they were passing, and Kirk was at center stage.

"Nine minutes to overload." Spock's baritone voice pretended emotionlessness, but that was a lie.

"Captain," the governor pressed, "I know what you're thinking and I don't like it. The colonists are depending on those drones. Webb Three's the only one manufacturing appliance subsystems. The Webbs have spacedock facilities, computer components, all sorts of things critical to our setting up a viable spaceport in record time! ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Star Trek
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0671042963
• ISBN 13: 9780671042967
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352