“Give it here,” McCoy said. He took the hypo and pushed up his own sleeve. “This once, Admiral, you’re beyond your capabilities.”
Outside the prison, Hikaru Sulu ran his hands through his hair to muss it, tucked one side of his ruffled civilian shirt in and left the other free, hyperventilated for a few breaths, and, when he thought he had a properly flustered air about him, flung open the door and rushed into the reception area. The two guards looked up from their card game, startled by the appearance of another visitor so late at night.
“Where’s Admiral Kirk?” Sulu said urgently.
One of the guards looked him up and down.
“He’s with a prisoner. What’s it to you?”
“Get him quickly! Starfleet Commander Morrow wants him—right now!”
The guard snorted with irritation, glanced at his partner and shrugged, laid his cards aside, and fumbled around for his electronic key. He vanished into the cell block. His partner glanced speculatively at the facedown cards, glanced at Sulu with unconcealed disdain, and flipped his partner’s poker hand face up. Then, watching Sulu with a faint sneer, he turned the cards back over.
Sulu simply watched as if he saw men cheat their partners every day and thought nothing of it. It was to his advantage if the guard assumed he was a powerless flunky.
The guard stretched and yawned.
“Keeping you busy?” Sulu said to the big man.
“Don’t get smart, Tiny.”
Sulu frowned. He had to remind himself forcibly that he was supposed to be someone’s messenger boy.
“This man is sick! Look at him!” Kirk’s muffled voice came from beyond the cell-block door.
The guard heard, too, and rose to his feet. Sulu took a step forward, ready to distract him. The console did the job for him.
The signal buzzed insistently. The guard frowned, glanced at the cell block door, and snatched up the receiver. Sulu relaxed, centered himself, and waited. These few minutes were crucial. A glitch now could destroy the whole plan.
“Sixth floor holding,” the guard said. He listened to his earphone. “Yeah, come on up and get him, his visitor’s just leaving…. What? Some admiral, name of Kirk.”
Sulu could hear the squawk of protest from the receiver. He also heard a crash and thud from within the cell block, but the guard was too distracted to notice.
“How the hell am I supposed to know that?” the guard snarled. “He’s a damned admiral—! All right!” He flung down the earpiece and headed for the door. He heard the commotion beyond.
The door to the cell block opened and Admiral Kirk stepped through, supporting Doctor McCoy.
“What the hell is going on?”
Sulu tapped the guard on the shoulder.
“Dammit, I told you—” The guard swung toward him, punching at Sulu’s head as he turned.
Sulu stepped into and around the strike, cutting down with his hands to redirect the force of the blow. As the big man stumbled forward, off-balance, Sulu drew him in, pivoted, and spiraled him up. The guard ran out from under himself, and Sulu completed the spiral into the ground. The wall interposed itself. Sulu’s opponent hit it with a thud—a hollow thud, Sulu fancied—and slid slowly and limply to the floor.
The form had not been perfect for yokomenuchi iriminage, and throwing one’s partner into the wall was rather bad form. But, then, this was the real world.
Besides, Sulu hated to be teased about his height.
Sulu glanced up. Kirk was watching appreciatively.
“The side elevator,” Sulu said. “Agents on their way up.”
Kirk nodded. He and McCoy hurried out the side door. Sulu paused by the master console. He reached beneath it, sought out the central processor, and applied the confuser he had put together. A moment later it rewarded him with a small fireworks display and the acrid smell of burned semiconductors.
Sulu started after Kirk. He reached the door, paused, and glanced down at the unconscious guard.
“Don’t call me ‘Tiny,’ ” he said.
Someone should have told the man that in Sulu’s chosen martial art, being short was an advantage.
Sulu caught up to Kirk and McCoy and helped support the doctor.
“I’m all right,” the doctor muttered. But he did not try to pull away. He was steadier than the last time Sulu had seen him. Apparently Sarek’s lexorin had worked.
Admiral Kirk pulled out his communicator and flipped it open.
“Unit two, this is one. The Kobayashi Maru has set sail for the promised land. Acknowledge.”
“Message acknowledged,” Chekov replied, his voice sounding tinny from the small speaker. “All units will be informed.”
Kirk closed his communicator. McCoy seemed to gain strength from the interchange and, perhaps, from regaining his freedom. He cocked his eyebrow at Kirk.
“You’re taking me to the promised land?”
“What are friends for?” said Kirk.
On board Excelsior, Montgomery Scott waited for the turbo-lift. He kept his hand thrust deep in his pocket. The sharp corners of a small and nondescript chunk of semiconductor, elegant only at the microscopic level, bit into his palm.
The lift arrived, the doors slid open, and Captain Styles stepped out. Scott started. He had not expected to see anyone, particularly not Captain Styles. He managed to greet the officer civilly; technically, after all, Styles was his superior officer.
Superior officer, indeed, Scott thought angrily. Taking this ship from our own Mister Sulu with nae a second thought nor a protest. ’Tis nae thing superior in that.
“Ah, Mister Scott,” Styles said. “Calling it a night?”
“Aye, Captain, yes,” Scott said, trying to maintain his frozen smile.
“Turning in myself. Don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep, though—I’m looking forward to breaking some of the Enterprise’s speed records tomorrow.”
“Aye, sir,” Scott said through clenched teeth. “Good night.” Scott got into the lift. As soon as the doors slid closed between him and Styles, he scowled.
His whole time on Excelsior had been like a replay of the arguments he had had with Mister Sulu about the ship. Only this time, Scott lost most of the arguments. Scott would never admit it to Sulu, but Excelsior was, indeed, a miracle of engineering. He had expected it to be full of complications, but its systems were elegantly integrated, clean, and nearly flawless. Scott, of course, had been looking for the flaws.
“Level please,” the ship’s computer said.
There were a few things on the ship that Scott did not like, such as the faintly insolent baritone voice of the computer. Had he the charge of Excelsior, that would change.
“Transporter room,” he said.
“Thank you,” said the computer.
“Up your shaft!”
The lift jerked into motion.
“Temper, temper,” Scott said.
Saavik and David struggled up the steep flank of the mountain, seeking a vantage point from which to watch for other survivors of Grissom. David believed it was at least possible that a few others might have had enough warning to escape. He knew Saavik thought the possibility unlikely, but she had not tried to persuade him it was impossible. In fact, she had barely spoken to him since his confession about Genesis. When he suggested they climb to higher ground, she merely shrugged, picked up the Vulcan boy, and started toward the mountain that rose abruptly from the surrounding desert.
“Are you mad at me?” David asked hesitantly.
She kept on climbing. But after another twenty meters she said, “Were I to permit the less civilized part of my character to dictate my reactions, I would be infuriated with you.”
“I had to do it!” David said. “It shouldn’t have put anyone in danger, and if it worked—”
“Yes,” she said. “So you have said.”
“I knew if I told you, I’d lose you as my friend,” David said, despondent.
Saavik stopped and laid the Vulcan boy down ge
ntly in the shade of a tree, out of the penetrating blue-white sunlight. Then she faced David and took his hands in hers.
“You have not lost me as a friend,” she said.
“But—you must hate me, after all this!”
“I am angry,” she said, not bothering to conceal her feelings behind a philosophical comparison of Vulcans and Romulans, no longer trying to claim that she did not possess those feelings at all. “If I understand them properly, anger and hatred are two very different emotions. And again, if I understand correctly—it is unusual to hate a person that one loves.”
“Saavik—” He tightened his grasp on her hands.
“Perhaps I am not capable of love, as humans know it,” Saavik said. “But as you cannot explain it, I am free to define it for myself. I choose to define it as the feelings that I have for you.”
She looked into his eyes. She felt in his wrists his cool, strong pulse. She drew her hands up his arms, to his shoulders, to the sides of his face. He moved toward her and put his arms around her. She kissed him. David felt as if he were dissolving in a white-hot flame, or tumbling unprotected through a solar flare.
Saavik drew away.
“We must go on,” she said. “We cannot stay here.”
As she started toward the Vulcan boy, she heard a strange sound. She glanced back the way they had come.
“David,” she said with wonder, “look.”
Far below, the glacier lapped at the foot of the mountain, surging up in slow-motion waves. As David and Saavik watched, the ice crept forward, piling and folding and crushing itself against immovable stone, squealing and cracking and shrieking. The ice had completely engulfed the desert, inundating it like a silver flood.
Scott materialized in the dark. He hated being transported into darkness.
“Chekov?” he whispered.
“Welcome home, Mister Scott,” Chekov said. “Zdrastvuyte, tovarisch.”
“None o’ your heathen gibberish, Chekov,” Scott said. “How did ye get on board?”
“We have ways,” Chekov said.
“Which ways, in particular?”
“Partner of ‘Unit three’ was taking advantage of her good nature, was late for job. Will be more difficult for ‘Unit one.’ ”
“All right,” Scott said. “Let’s get some life in tae this old tub.” He squinted across the transporter room of the Enterprise. He could barely make out Chekov’s hands in the faint glow of the console’s controls.
“How was trip?” Chekov said.
“Short,” Scott said. “Let’s get to work.”
Uhura replied to the ten P.M. check.
“Roger. Old City Station at twenty-two hundred hours. All is well.”
She made a few adjustments to the controls of the Earth-based transporter to which she had been assigned. This was a peaceful posting; she had been here since four this evening and, officially, she had transported no one in or out. The schedule listed no travelers—officially—for the rest of the night.
She became aware that Lieutenant Heisenberg was watching her closely, with a slight frown of curiosity. He leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head and his feet up on the console.
“You amaze me, Commander,” he said.
“How is that?” she said mildly.
“You’re a twenty-year space veteran—yet you ask for the worst duty station in town. I mean, look at it—this is the hind end of space.”
“Oh, peace and quiet appeal to me, Lieutenant.” Uhura smiled a private smile.
“Maybe it’s okay for someone like you, whose career is winding down.”
Uhura raised an eyebrow at that remark, but let it pass.
“But me,” Heisenberg said, “I need some challenge in my life. Some adventure. Even just a surprise or two.”
“You know what they say, Lieutenant. Be careful what you ask for: you may get it.”
“I wish,” he said with feeling.
Uhura glanced at the clock. She had tried to persuade Heisenberg to go home early, on the grounds that there was hardly enough work for one person, let alone two. Unfortunately, he had declined. Apparently he felt slightly guilty about arriving an hour late. She wished he would choose some other day to make it up, but that was life.
The door slid open.
Admiral Kirk, Doctor McCoy, and Commander Sulu entered and headed straight for the transporter platform without a pause. Kirk appeared intent, but intent on something and somewhere else, distracted from this place and time. McCoy looked exhausted, but steady. Sulu caught Uhura’s gaze and offered her his unshadowed smile.
“I talked to Sarek,” Uhura heard Kirk say softly to McCoy. “I’m worried about him, Bones. The strain on him—”
Heisenberg dropped his feet to the floor and sat up very straight in his chair.
“Gentlemen,” Uhura said. “Good evening.”
“Good evening, Commander,” Admiral Kirk said. “Everything ready?”
“Yes, Admiral.” She swept her hand through the air in a gesture of welcome. “Step into my parlor.”
Uhura saw Heisenberg’s jaw go agape as he recognized the travelers. He was the one factor of uncertainty in this equation. She hoped he would behave sensibly. She began setting controls.
“Commander,” he whispered, “these are some of the most famous people in Starfleet. Admiral Kirk! My gods!”
“Good for you, Lieutenant,” she said.
“But it’s damned irregular—no orders, no encoded ID—”
“All true,” she said agreeably.
Heisenberg glanced over her shoulder and frowned at the settings she had entered.
“That’s the Enterprise,” he said in a low and worried voice.
“And another one for you, Lieutenant. You’re doing very well tonight.”
“But the Enterprise is sealed—we can’t beam anybody directly on board!”
“Can’t we?”
“No, we can’t—It’s directly against orders, we can’t just let people waltz in here and go on board a sealed ship, no matter who they are!”
Uhura was rather glad he was making the objection, for in the long run it would serve to keep him out of trouble.
“What are we going to do about it?” he exclaimed.
“I’m going to do nothing about it. You’re going to sit in the closet.”
“The closet!” He backed off from her. “Have you lost all sense of reality?”
“But this isn’t reality, Lieutenant,” she said sweetly. “This is fantasy.” She drew out her concealed pocket phaser and leveled it at him. It was set on stun, of course, but stun was more than sufficient for this exercise. She hoped Heisenberg would not make her use it. Waking up from phaser stun was rather unpleasant. Uhura wished him neither harm nor physical discomfort. His psychic discomfort, though, was another thing entirely. She owed him a little psychic discomfort, after that snarky remark about her career.
“You wanted adventure?” she asked. “How’s this? Got your old adrenaline going?”
Heisenberg nodded.
“Good boy,” she said. “Now get in the closet.”
She touched a key and the door to the storage closet, just behind him, slid open. She gestured with the phaser and he backed into it.
“Wait—”
She closed the door.
“I’m glad you’re on our side,” McCoy said.
She smiled.
“Let’s go,” Kirk said. “Uhura, is it on automatic? Come on, get up here.”
“No,” she said.
It took him a second to realize what she had said. His expression changed from distraction to amazement.
“ ‘No’?” he said. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I realize that the Admiral is…somewhat unfamiliar with the word—”
Kirk opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.
“—but somebody’s got to stay behind and put enough glitches in communications so you don’t have every ship in the sector comin
g after you.”
“You can do it from the Enterprise—”
“No, I can’t. It’s too easy to jam. Admiral, there’s no time to argue! Prepare to energize!”
“What about—?” He gestured toward the closet.
“Don’t worry about Mister Adventure. I’ll have him eating out of my hand.” If I have to, she thought. “Go with all my hopes, my friends.”
Kirk nodded, acquiescing. “Energize.”
She activated the beam.
Nine
After the figures of Kirk, Sulu, and McCoy turned to sparks and vanished, Heisenberg started pounding on the inside of the closet door. Uhura ignored him and set to work opening the communications channels that she would need to interfere with as soon as Spacedock realized what was going on.
Uhura was in her element at the console. She infiltrated every important communications channel between headquarters and the fleet. By the time the tangle got straightened out, the Enterprise would be halfway to Genesis. If the ship could evade any pursuit sent directly from Spacedock, then Admiral Kirk should be able to carry out his mission. If it could be carried out.
Sulu felt his body form around his consciousness, and then he was standing on the bridge of the Enterprise with Kirk and McCoy solidifying beside him. The ship’s systems were running at standby level, and the bridge felt very empty with only five people. At the navigation console, Chekov raised his hand in greeting. Scott rose from the command chair to greet Kirk.
“As promised, ’tis all yours, sir,” he said. “All systems automated and ready. A chimpanzee and two trainees could run her.”
“Thank you, Mister Scott,” Kirk said drily. “I’ll try not to take that personally.” He drew aside, with McCoy, and faced the other three. “My friends,” he said. “I can’t ask you to go any farther. Doctor McCoy and I have to do this. The rest of you do not.”
Taking the Enterprise to Genesis would require a good deal more than “a chimpanzee and two trainees,” and everyone on the bridge knew it. Sulu strode down the steps and took his place at the helm. Yesterday he had made a decision on where to place his loyalties. He saw no reason to change his mind now.
Duty, Honor, Redemption Page 38
