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  STAR TREK®

  THE ORIGINAL SERIES

  DILITHIUM IS A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND

  Neil Bryant

  “IT’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 th
at 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.

  “Don’t even think about it, Harry. The information is encrypted. Only I can access it.”

  “Wouldn’t even consider doing such a thing. Who do you think I am?” said Harry indignantly. “You could be a little more trusting. It’s not like I’m interrogating you on how you came to possess highly classified Starfleet materials.”

  “What do you mean? It’s like I said, I met with Doctor Marcus. We discussed one of the planets I had the mining rights to. She thought it would be a good candidate. Everything was ready to go, but at the last minute, Federation scientists discovered microorganisms in a volcano bed. The launch got called off. It’s all very simple, really.”

  “Hmm. So, in the simple act of discussing planet habitability, Doctor Marcus felt compelled to divulge everything about Project Genesis, including how to build the device? You expect me to believe that Doctor Marcus, who barely knew you, gave you the plans to one of the most destructive forces in the universe in exchange for some life-form readings?”

  Eve felt her cheeks grow warm and flushed. “Okay, so I called in a few favors at Starfleet Command. I was curious.”

  “Curious? About what? You’re not a scientist.”

  “Fine,” said Eve, exasperated. “Maybe I learned some things from you a little too well. I saw the potential for a major business opportunity and took it. Later, I realized I made a mistake.”

  “But you still kept the information.”

  Eve slammed the palms of her hands against the armrests of her chair and quickly stood up. “I had my reasons, and I’m certainly not sharing them with you. I’ll be in my quarters.” She pivoted around and made a beeline for the bridge doors. They whisked open, and she stormed off down the dingy metal corridor, her shoes clanking off the grated deck plates. The old lights blinked and made rattling noises overhead. She stopped in front of the quarters Harry had given her for the journey. She pressed a button on the wall, and the doors pulled open. The accommodations were small and in the same poor condition as the rest of the ship, but they were better than the hovels to which Harry had dragged her in her youth. There was at least a bed, sonic shower, and toilet. The room had the benefit of enduring little use over the years, but everything was covered in a thick layer of dust.

  She plopped down on the bed and put her head against the pillow, pressing the palm of her hand against her forehead. Even after all these years, that man still had the power to make her so angry. Had she made the right decision, agreeing to deliver Genesis? Genesis was supposed to bring life from lifelessness, but since the first experiment had ended in disaster, all it could really do was destroy existing life . . . on a massive scale.

  Harry wasn’t the one she was concerned about. He would never see the Genesis information and wouldn’t know what to do with it even if he did. The plans would go straight into the hands of the buyer—the person who really worried her. She knew nothing about him or his people. Why were they so far out? It was possible their star was located beyond Federation space, which would complicate getting help from the Federation, especially if another alien race claimed their system as part of its territory. But none of that explained how they’d learned about Harry, much less contacted him. To help put her mind at ease, she’d taken a second data crystal that could corrupt and erase all data in the first crystal if need be.

  She didn’t know when she closed her eyes or even if she fell asleep, but she was jarred to alertness by the gyration of the deck plates. She quickly sat up. A metallic gr
oan filled the corridors and rooms of the small vessel. It didn’t take long to figure out Harry’s ship was traveling at a warp factor it was not rated for.

  Eve jumped out of bed and took off down the corridor toward the bridge. The gyrations were becoming a full-blown quake. She had to use the bulkhead as a brace to keep from falling. The ship felt moments away from shaking itself apart. Eve tumbled through the doors of the bridge and, through a controlled fall, managed to get to the navigation station where Harry was still seated, working feverishly to coax more power out of the warp engines and sweating like a pig. He was damn near hyperventilating.

  “Harry, what the hell are you doing?” she yelled over the racket. She groped her way into the chair. An indicator on the console was blinking—they were being pursued. She checked the status display, which indicated an Excelsior-class starship. Harry had panicked at seeing the Feds, yet again. “You need to drop to sublight. Otherwise, the ship’s going to fly apart.”

  “Are you crazy?” gasped Harry, turning briefly to face her. His eyes were wild. He was clearly in flight-or-fight mode, and in typical Harry Mudd fashion, he’d chosen flight. “They’ll board the ship, find the Genesis plans, and hang us at the nearest starbase! It’s the death penalty if we’re caught. You know that.”

  Eve rolled her eyes. Typical. “If you don’t power down the engines, we’re dead anyway. If you couldn’t outrun the Enterprise in your old piece of junk ship, how can you possibly hope to outrun an Excelsior-class starship in this piece of junk?” He was still focused on the controls, giving no sign he’d heard her. “Harry,” she said, keeping her voice calm as possible. She reached out and placed her palm softly over his hand. “Harry,” she repeated. He finally turned toward her. She looked into his eyes. “I can get us out of this. Trust me. Power down the main engines, please.” The wildness left his expression. His breathing became more regular. Finally, his hands glided over the controls, and the ship began to decelerate. The shaking and cacophony of straining bulkheads quickly subsided. As it did, Eve heard a voice crackling over the comm system: