by Judith
After he had spoken, McCoy realized that he had hesitated slightly when he had mentioned the Academy—as if it, too, like ‘starship’ to the child, was more than a word to him.
Glynis had heard it, as well. “Hey, mister. What do you do?”
McCoy scratched at his beard again. “Me? I’m retired.”
“Yeah? From what?”
McCoy chewed on his lip for a moment. Five minutes with this child was turning out to be more enlightening than two weeks watching pine trees grow in Yosemite. “From Starfleet,” he said.
Glynis’s mouth dropped open and her eyes widened. “Why? Why would anyone retire from ... Starfleet?” Such magic in the way she said that word.
McCoy stared out across the lunar vista. Beyond what had once been the final frontier, he could make out the domes of the civilian spaceport, glinting white against the black sky of the Moon, just like the stars beyond.
“Why, mister?” Glynis asked again. “That’s like quitting, isn’t it? How could you quit Starfleet? How, mister? Why?”
But McCoy had no answer for her. At least, not yet.
FOUR
Beside his Starfleet Command gold star, the tribunal judge wore a small IDIC emblem on his black robe. That meant he had studied law on Vulcan. But Uhura didn’t care where, when, or for how long anyone had studied anything. She was right and Starfleet was wrong and that’s all there was to it.
“Ensign Uhura,” the judge said, his voice echoing against the hard walls of the nondescript Starfleet Lunar Hall of Justice hearing room. “Please approach the bench.”
Alise Chavez, Uhura’s legal representative, nodded at her. Chavez was a harried-looking lieutenant junior grade in Starfleet’s Justice Division, with long hair spraying out erratically from an improperly fastened clip at the back of her head and a red specialist’s tunic that was at least two sizes too large. Uhura’s case docket was one of twenty microtape wafers spilling out of the case on the lieutenant’s table, so Uhura suspected that a nod of the head was about all the expert guidance she could expect today. She approached the bench, rustling in her one-size-fits-all, standard-issue, blue prison jumpsuit.
“Ensign Uhura,” the judge intoned. “Do you know why you have been brought before the tribunal today?”
“Yes, sir.” Because it was three standard months to the day [44] since the first time she had been brought before the tribunal. Let’s get on with it, she thought.
“Then I won’t have to go into a long speech about your oath as a Starfleet officer—”
I’m an ensign, now, you bald-headed, red-eyed—
“... nor about your duty to uphold the laws of the Articles of the United Federation of Planets.”
“I am aware of both my oath and my duty, sir.”
The judge looked down at his screenpad and scrawled some notes. Probably checking off his list, Uhura thought, just like every other time.
The judge cleared his throat. “Ensign Uhura, I am required to ask you if, at this time, you have reconsidered your refusal to sign the document displayed before you.” He pressed a control on his screenpad and the disputed document appeared on the viewscreen built into the front of his high desk, directly before Uhura’s eyes.
“Yes, sir,” Uhura said formally, “I have reconsidered my refusal to sign that document.”
The judge’s eyes blinked in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
“I have reconsidered it most carefully.”
“You have?” He leaned forward, hands on either side of his screenpad. In Uhura’s last eleven appearances before the other judges who had rotated through this tribunal, all she had volunteered were variations on the word no. “And ... ?” he prompted.
“And after due reconsideration, I once again refuse to sign it because it is a false and—”
The judge pushed down on his desk’s gavel switch and a low rush of white noise sprang from hidden speakers, preventing anything else Uhura said from being recorded by the reporting computer. But it didn’t prevent her from speaking until she was finished.
“Are you quite done, Ensign?” the judge asked when Uhura’s mouth had finally closed.
“Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it, sir?”
[45] The judge’s thick eyebrows quivered in irritation but he touched his fingers to the IDIC symbol he wore and Uhura could see his lips forming silent Vulcan phonemes as he repeated a calming koan.
“Very well, Ensign. Since you have seen fit to abrogate your sworn oath and—”
Uhura wasn’t going to let him get away with it. She wasn’t going to let anyone get away with it. “Your honor! I object!”
The judge shook his head and looked over at the overworked lieutenant j.g. “Lieutenant Chavez, could you please remind your client, once again, that she is the prisoner and cannot object.”
Chavez hastily began to get up from behind her table but Uhura stared her down, smiling tightly, until the lieutenant lost the will to speak and sank back into her chair. After three months of dealing with Uhura, she knew no one could win an argument with the communications specialist once her mind was made up. And right now it was most certainly made up.
The judge began again. “Ensign Uhura, this tribunal, duly empowered by the authority of Starfleet Command, has found that you have abrogated your sworn oath of allegiance. ...” He paused, but Uhura said nothing, for now. “And have consistently displayed your contempt for this court and its authority.”
You got that right, Uhura thought.
The judge tapped a finger against the side of his screenpad and Uhura wondered what the man’s Vulcan instructors would say about the telltale sign indicating that not everything was under control.
“Ensign, for three months you have defied the authority of this tribunal. First, by your refusal to testify during the board of inquiry hearing into the events at Talin IV—”
“Their minds were made up from the beginning!”
The judge glared but didn’t stop talking. “And now, by refusing to sign this statement confirming your actions as recorded by the Enterprise’s log tapes. For three months you have been held in detention as punishment for that show of [46] contempt. And now, unfortunately, as we are not at war and the charges against you do not pertain to the regulations covering vital secrets or mutiny, this tribunal no longer has the authority to continue your imprisonment.”
The judge looked steadily at Uhura. “You do realize that there will be no going back after this?”
“The document is false. The conclusions are wrong.” The judge held his finger over the gavel button but Uhura said nothing more.
“Very well.” He signed his name on the bottom of the screenpad and began speaking in a rapid monotone. “Ms. Uhura, acting under the authority of Starfleet Command general regulations in peacetime, this tribunal declares you discharged from the rights, duties, and privileges of a noncommissioned officer in Starfleet. Said discharge to be listed on your record with dishonor. Your accumulated pay, pension, and education credits are forfeit. You are prohibited from ever accepting civilian employment with Starfleet, and are likewise prohibited from accepting employment with any civil branch of the United Federation of Planets, its member governments and bodies, for a period of ten standard years. You are reminded that your oath pertaining to safeguarding the classified information which might or might not have been divulged to you during the period of your service is still in effect, along with all pertinent publication and other dissemination restrictions. Failure to abide by the conditions of that oath and those restrictions may render you liable for both civil and/or criminal charges.” The judge signed his name one final time. “This tribunal stands adjourned.”
The judge slipped his screenpad under his arm and left the hearing room without looking back. Uhura went to the desk where Lieutenant Chavez gathered up her stack of brightly colored microtapes.
“What’s the next step?” Uhura asked.
Chavez shrugged as she quickly checked the time readout on her p
ortable computer screen. “You go to the quartermaster and get your own clothes back. And past that, you tell me. You [47] got what you wanted, didn’t you? You’re a civilian.” Her words were hurried. She had places to go.
“If I had signed that piece of garbage I would have had no choice but to resign. And all a resignation gives me is a chance to reconsider my decision within a six-month grace period. As if they’d let me back. At least I’m able to appeal a dishonorable discharge.”
Chavez sighed as she slipped her computer into her case and closed it. “Come on, Uhura. You already know how that’s going to play out. You file your appeal and they’re going to assign you someone with even less experience and training than I have.” She stood up to leave.
But Uhura placed her hands on Chavez’s case, to keep the lieutenant in place for a few moments longer. “Chavez, I am getting someone to represent me.”
“A civilian attorney? To argue a case against a Starfleet tribunal? You know how much something like that’s going to cost? And you heard the conditions of discharge: You’re going to be lucky to get work within ten parsecs of here to pay for it.”
“I mean, I’m getting someone else in Starfleet to represent me.”
Chavez stared at her in dismay. “Uhura, haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said in the past three months? As far as the Admiralty’s concerned, you don’t exist. The whole Talin incident, the Enterprise Five, it’s all being beamed out to a dust cloud.”
“I’m not letting them do that,” Uhura stated stubbornly.
“You’re still not facing the facts! You were a fast-track officer on the best damned ship in Starfleet. There are two admirals at Command who came up through communications just like you. You had pull, tradition, a career path, top brass in your camp, and it didn’t help you!” Chavez held her fist to her chest. “Look at what the Justice Division has done to you! I’m a junior grade who’s spent the last year here on the Moon defending red shirts for slamboxing in bars on shore leave. Don’t you get it? There’s no one left in Starfleet who wants to have anything at all to do with you. Your captain didn’t order any of you to do what you [48] did, so you have no excuse. And you were the one who pressed the button that helped destroy a world. An entire world.” Chavez pulled her case away from Uhura. “It’s over, Uhura. No one in Starfleet will appeal anything for you.”
“Spock will,” Uhura said.
“The Vulcan?”
“He’s been assigned to Technology Support in San Francisco. He’s going to represent me.”
Chavez reached out to take Uhura’s hand, some sympathy still in her eyes.
“Uhura, he resigned.”
“What?”
“Yesterday. It was in the ComSys updates. The last of the Five to go. He can’t appear before any Starfleet tribunal as a civilian. Unless he’s got a law degree. And has Sol system accreditation.”
“But ...” Uhura was speechless. She and Spock had talked less than a tenday ago. He had helped her plan her entire strategy from the beginning. He had told her to force them to give her a dishonorable discharge so he could launch an appeal and bring the whole case to open court. “Spock wouldn’t abandon me ... he couldn’t.”
Chavez patted Uhura’s hand. “All of you people from the Enterprise have to start your lives again. The Vulcan must have realized that. By getting out, and leaving you behind, he did ... the logical thing.”
Uhura pulled her hand away. She would not be patronized anymore than she’d be railgunned into accepting blame for what had happened at Talin IV. “He is not ‘the Vulcan’! His name is Spock and he’s one of the most honorable beings I know.”
Chavez nodded her head wearily, not wanting to argue anymore. “Matters of honor are seldom logical, Uhura. After having worked with a Vulcan for so long, I would have thought you’d understand them better than most.” She tucked her case under her arm.
[49] “I understand everything that’s gone on better than any of you blinder-wearing, rule-quoting, Starfleet drones do! Here and on Talin!”
Chavez stepped away, her sympathy turning to pity. “But except for a few student protest groups, no one wants to know about Talin anymore, Uhura. They just want to forget. It’s over. Accept it. It’ll make your life a lot easier.”
Uhura’s hands knotted into fists at her sides. “The only thing I’m prepared to accept is the truth.”
Shaking her head, Chavez walked toward the hearing room’s doors and they slid open before her. But before she left, she stopped and turned. “What I can’t figure out, is how you could have spent so much time in Starfleet, seen the way it operates, and still believe that you might have a chance against the systems that make it work as well as it does. I mean, what makes you think you stand a chance? Why keep fighting the inevitable?”
Uhura’s voice was solid and strong in the silent room. “Because I once served under Captain James T. Kirk on the best damned ship in Starfleet,” she said. “And I will serve with him on that ship again. And God help anyone, or any admiral, who gets in my way.”
“Ask a simple question,” Chavez said softly, then stepped through the doorway, her work at an end.
But for Uhura, it was time to begin.
The Starfleet Lunar Hall of Justice in Oceanview was one of those peculiar government buildings that seemed to have no particular style, other than a quest for monumentalism. It was close to a century old and had been built in the twilight of Earth’s cultural fascination with anything Centauran. Unfortunately, the fact that it had been built on the Moon under natural gravity—long since augmented to Earth normal throughout the city’s business sections—had inspired the architects to alter the proportions of loadbearing arches whose original graceful dimensions had been dictated by a more massive planet. In [50] addition, the building’s airy roof gardens were situated five meters beneath the inner surface of a dingy green pressure dome instead of under spacious blue skies, further removing it from the Centauran ideals of open post-harmony defensism.
McCoy stood in the plaza before the ungainly structure, wondering how anyone could have become enamored of an architectural style that had arisen on a world where people spent most of their time burying things underground so they couldn’t be detected by hypothetical enemies from space. That cultural paranoia, supported by fiber optic data transmission that prevented stray radiation from leaking out into space, had kept Earth’s first expedition to another star from discovering there was an inhabited, technologically advanced civilization virtually next door until the first shuttles were almost ready to land. The members of the Federation are all so eager to find new life and new civilizations, McCoy thought, but when we find it, none of us wants to go first. Maybe that was the real reason for what had happened on Talin: not that Kirk had been engaged in brash adventurism, but that everyone else involved, including the First Contact Office, had been too cautious.
“Doctor McCoy?”
McCoy turned to see Uhura come up beside him, her eyes fixed on his beard. She looked somehow out of place in her civilian clothes—a rough textured brown and white caftan that floated above her ankles. No doubt he looked similarly odd to her out of his science blues and in a vat-cotton, multistriped shirt and hiking trousers.
“How long have you been here?” Uhura asked, not taking her eyes off the beard.
“Just arrived,” McCoy said. He ran his fingers through his whiskers. “I don’t blame you for staring. There is a lot of white in it, isn’t there? Took me by surprise, too.”
“It’s not the white, Doctor. It’s just the beard. I didn’t recognize you at first and I was worried that I had left you standing here for the past half hour.” Then she peered more closely at the beard. “But you’re right, that is a lot of white.”
McCoy laughed, held out his arms to her, and they hugged [51] each other tightly. “It’s good to see you again, Uhura. Damned good.”
“I know the feeling.” Uhura took his hand in hers. She looked somber for a moment. “Is there anything t
o your being late?”
McCoy smiled. “Oh, no. Not a thing. I got in this morning and went down to Tranquility Park. Had a very interesting discussion with a young lady.”
Uhura smiled. “I see.”
“A young lady of eight on a school band trip,” McCoy clarified. “And with any luck, she’ll be running Starfleet in fifty years.” He pointed over to a tunnelway a few hundred meters west of the justice building. “There’s a restaurant over there in the Park Dome. Wasn’t too bad a few years ago. Want to get some civilian food to go with the civilian clothes?”
Uhura nodded. “I’d like that. I ... I can’t get used to ... any of this.”
“Neither can I,” McCoy said and they began to walk to the park together, arms linked. “So,” McCoy began after a few steps in silence, “how did the hearing go this morning?”
“Just fine,” Uhura said. “For a dishonorable discharge.”
“I’m glad they let you out.” McCoy glanced sideways at a group of three officers walking by in gold shirts with commanders’ braids. They saw him and Uhura as well, but there was no flicker of recognition. McCoy was surprised, considering the coverage the Enterprise Five had been given.
“No choice, Doctor. They could only hold me on contempt charges for three months in peacetime. Anything longer is against the Articles.”
McCoy squeezed her hand. “Well, now that you’re out, you should know that there’s a big fat loophole in that regulation. Technically, they could have dropped charges against you one day before the limit ran out, held you over for any one of a hundred different minor violations, and the very next day brought new contempt charges against you good for another three months.”
“What?” Uhura stopped walking and other pedestrians scrambled to move around her and the doctor.
[52] “It’s not often done,” McCoy said, “but if they had really wanted you, they could have kept you pretty much indefinitely.”
“I suppose that means my so-called legal advisor was right. Starfleet does want to cover up what happened.”
