by L. A. Graf
and records, and knew he was tired when the disarray didn't even bother
him. Much. He was just about to turn his back on the clutter to key
open the cabinet behind his desk when his eye caught on a note beside
his computer, scribbled ih his ovbn hand weeney.
He hung his head, one hand on the infrared visors preparatory to putting
them away. Oh, God--Sweeney. He still had to clear Sweeney's gear out
of' the squad room and get it down to cargo for transport back to Earth.
Sliding the visors off the desk, he turned back to the cabinet, waited
through the retina scan, identified himself for the voice ID, unlocked
the doors with his key, and tried not to sling the visors into the rear
of the cabinet as he thought about distilling a young man's career down
to only as many one-by-one-by-one-meter boxes as could be stacked in the
corner of a small civilian shuttle.
It was at times like this that he hated his job.
No one had been in the squad room for hours. Chekov turned up the lights
as he came through the door, watching the darkness draw away from tables
and lockers, listening to the late-night hush that was so different from
the room's normal daytime chatter. At first, he didn't see the white
storage carton he'd left for loading, earlier that day. Then he caught
sight of the crate already stacked with three others, filling the top of
a table that had been pushed against one wall. Guilt and relief mixed
uncomfortably inside him. Someone else--probably Sweeney's bunkmate,
Coffey--had already packed Sweeney's belongings and marked them for
transport. One less job to do, Chekov thought, as he threaded his way
between tables and chairs to look at the markings on the pile.
Still, it was a job he'd have preferred no one have to do in the first
place.
On top of the first box, a hand-scrawled note covered a small pile of
loose items.
Chief,
Please send with.
Chekov picked through the accompanying pieces, feeling a little like an
unwelcome intruder at some other family's funeral. A disk of
who-knew-whatm photo images, music, text. He put it with the note and
set it aside. A small spray of preserved flowers, handwritten
sympathies from at least three different people, a bright, jumbled
collection of pictures from a field hockey game the guards had played at
their last rec stop. Chekov rearranged the photos in the order he'd
found them, then placed them gently beneath the original note to hide
Sweeney's smiling face from view.
"You have an alarm in your cabin," Sulu's voice croaked from behind him,
"that goes off whenever someone tries to get into your office. I don't
mean to be rude or anything, but does the word 'anal' mean anything to
you?"
Chekov jerked around, startled, and knew the flash of irritation he felt
was just a surface substitute for the embarrassment churning inside him.
Embarrassment over what, he wasn't exactly sure, but he wiped at his
eyes with the back of one hand as though expecting to find something
there. "What are you doing here?"
Sulu leaned heavily on the squad room doorjamb, his uniform jacket
unfastened and rumpled, one hand shielding his eyes against the overhead
lights as he squinted across at his friend. "I think I hate you.
You're dressed, you're clean, you don't even need a have." He tipped his
head slightly to peek at the quad room clock, and groaned sleepily.
"God, Pavel, do you know what time it is?"
Chekov half-glanced at the clock, even though he was perfectly aware of
the time. "Sulu, what are y6u doing here? You work first shift in the
morning."
"I don't work anywhere if I can't get into my room for a bath and clean
clothes." He slid into one of the chairs, yawning Stop that/Chekov
thought at him angrily. I don't have time to get sleepy/But the damage
was already done, and he caught himself echoing the helmsman's yawn. "I
guess I fell asleep on your couch. Where the hell have you been?"
Trying to salvage my department, Chekov wanted to answer, but knew that
wasn't entirely honest--he wasn't convinced there was anything wrong
except for the auditors. Scrubbing at his eyes again, this time to
clear away sleepiness, he turned to poke through Sweeney's boxes until
he could find one with enough small space to stow the guards' mementos.
"Trying to do my job."
Sulu made a noncommittal noise. "You know, the whole point of having
subordinates is so they can do your job for you when you're off duty. Or
do COs get higher efficiency ratings if they fall asleep at work?"
That struck deeper even than Chekov expected. He had to repress a
sudden urge to slam the boxes against
the facing wall. "Sulu, go home."
"Hey--" "Go home!"
He heard the helmsman shift position, and hoped for a moment that Sulu
had actually taken the hint for once and left him to be alone. Instead,
the squadroom
door slid shut and Sulu asked quietly, carefully, "Are
you okay?"
"I'm
"Look at me."
Chekov hesitated, caught with the spray of flowers in his hand and
nowhere in the box safe enough to keep them from being destroyed. He
finally laid them crosswise atop the waiting photos and turned to meet
Sulu's stare.
The helmsman always surprised Chekov with the frank intensity of his
attention. It was that same superhuman focus that let him squeeze the
life out of a hobby in less than two weeks, and let him pilot a starship
better than any other being alive. It also made him very difficult to
face when he chose to direct his attention to somewhat more pers onal
matters. "Pavel, what's the matter with you?"
Chekov took advantage of his answer to glance away from Sulu's expectant
frown. "I've just had a lot on mymind since the murders, that's all."
He made the mistake of looking up to check his progress with the dodge,
and his resolve unraveled like mist in a stiff breeze. Damn SuluBif
they weren't friends already, Chekov could probably learn to hate him.
"Oh, Sulu, I'm so tired," the lieutenant sighed abruptly, sinking into
the chair across from his friend.
"Then go to bed," Sulu said with a shrug, obviously at a loss for what
else to suggest.
Chekov leaned over his knees to bury his face in his hands. The whole
business of sitting upright seemed suddenly too strenuous, and he wanted
nothing so much as to fastforward through his sleep period and get back
to trying to invent solutions for problems he wasn't sure he could
identify. "I don't know what to
do," he admitted, his voice muffled against his hands. "John Taylor
wants to take away my departmentwhe wants to reassign my people and put
me out of my job, and I don't know what to do to stop him."
"Can he actually do that?" Sulu asked, startled. Chekov nodded and sat
back, his hands in his hair. "So far as I know. Why couldn't he? Isn't
that why the Federation sent them here--to tell us how well we do our
jobs?" He looked over at Sulu, dark eyes meeting dark eyes across the
expected
someone like Taylor to come in and tell me I wasn't."
"Don't be stupid--you're a good officer."
Chekov had a feeling even Sulu knew how close that sounded to
condescension.
"I just don't know anymore," Chekov sighed. "I keep thinking that I
should be more certain, more dedicated, more sure of where I'm going. I
keep being aw" AJaid, he wanted to say. Afraid that I'm not really good
enough to have so many lives depending on me. But the admission seemed
to border dangerously on weakness, at a time when nothing but the very
best would do. "I just don't want anything else to go wrong," he
finally settled on, looking almost anywhere but at Sulu. "I don't want
anyone else to die--not when I'm here this time, and in charge, and
supposed to be able to prevent it."
Sulu didn't answer right away, and Chekov caught himself thinking, I
shouldn't have sat down, when his muscles started lodging sleepy
complaints. He was just summoning the willpower to push to his feet
when Sulu asked, "What did you mean just them 'here this time'?"
A little shot of adrenaline flashed through him, and Chekov knew that
Sulu saw the startled embarrassment on his face before he could remember
school his expression. Lack of sleep, he told Talking and not even
knowing what he was was his own fault for dwelling too much on and
Robert, and how nothing he thought of now save them.
"It's nothing." He tried not to seem flustered stood, but lying didn't
come to him easily even to serve in stupid situations like this. "I'm
tired and not making sense."
Sulu, still seated, peered up at him ' '
"You were making sense before."
Chekov stopped by the doorway and
a weak smile. "It happens like that sometimes." pantomimed shooting
himself in the temple. once."
"Right." Sulu didn't look convinced. "It's late," Chekov went on, not
giving his chance to pry further. "You really should go home get some
sleep. So should I."
Sulu looked for an instant as though he pursue the discussion, then
relented and follow Chekov down the hall. "I can't go home. stunningly
brilliant chief of security locked me my cabin by picking me a door code
I can't bet." He stretched, then winced and rubbed at shoulder. "I just
wish that chief of security's was more comfortable."
Chekov smiled--mostly for his friend's
and felt a surprising twinge of gratitude that he someone like Sulu
nearby through all of this. chief of security picked you a nice, easy
remember--7249."
Sulu made a face as he latched the front of jacket. "That's what I
typed."
"No, you didn't," Chekov told him patiently. "If you had, it would have
let you in."
Still, when they got to Sulu's cabin on Deck Six, the helmsman hurried
ahead to punch four digits into his lock before Chekov could look at the
readout. "Aha!" Sulu cried triumphantly.
Chekov gave a sigh and leaned over Sulu's shoulder to look at the panel.
"So what? That just means you tried an incorrect entry code at least
three times and locked up your system."
Sulu frowned at the locking mechanism. "I only tried once. And I swear
I did it right."
Chekov shrugged, not sure what else to tell him. "Then somebody tried to
break into your cabin."
"Oh, great," Sulu groaned. "I still haven't finished cleaning up from
the first time!" He stepped aside to let Chekov open the panel and
manually activate the door. "What is it they want, anyway? It's not
like I own anything valuable."
"It didn't look like they were interested in robbery when they were in
here before." Although he couldn't imagine what else could motivate
someone to harass the helmsman like this. Having no other comfort to
offer, he said, "Your door system worked, though, so I don't think you
have to worry. Just let me know if anybody tries this again."
Sulu nodded dejectedly and heaved a frustrated sigh. "In the meantime,
could you do me a favor? Just in case someone does break in?"
"Probably," Chekov admitted, not willing to commit before he was asked.
"What?"
"Keep my lizards for me?"
Chapter Nine
A nOHTMA HOWwrenched Sulu out of sleep, adrenaline exploding in his
blood so fiercely that he'd bolted out of his sheets and made it halfway
to the door before he quite knew where he was. The fuzziness of his
thinking told him it couldn't have been more than three hours since
Chekov let him back into his quarters, and his gut recognized the icy
bite of terror before his sleepy mind could identify the source the
ship's decompression alarm had gone off. He skidded to a stop, cursing,
but it was too late--his door's automatic sensors had already hummed
into motion. Expecting the other side to be cold and airless, Sulu
forced himself to blow out all his breath.
The metal panels slid open, not to the devouring black rush of vacuum,
but to warmth and light and a jangle of worried voices. Other crew
members were emerging from their quarters along the hall, their
shocked-alert faces at odds with rumpled night
clothes. Sulu took a thankful breath of air, then caught Uhura's amused
glance from across the corridor and blushed, ducking back into his
quarters.
"--possible hull breach on Deck Six only." Spock's calm voice echoed
along the hall as the ship's inter-eom momentarily cut through the
blaring alarm. Su]u listened intently while he pulled on his uniform
and stamped into his boots. "Evacuate all sectors according to standard
emergency procedure, then report to damage control. Repeat, we have a
possible hull breach on Deck Six only. All personnel should evacuate
their quarters immediately."
Footsteps thudded outside as crew members hurried toward the nearest
turbolift entrance. Sulu threw his jacket on over bare skin, spared one
regretful glance for his untilled lily pond and the small jungle of
plants around it, then ran for the door.
It opened onto Uhura's concerned dark face. "Are you all right?"
Sulu nodded, still feeling the flustered warmth in his cheeks. "Nobody
ever died of embarrassment," he said wryly. Farther down the curving
passage, an orderly file of crew members waited to pack themselves into
the open turbolift compartment. Sulu glanced around, worry swamping all
other emotions. No panicked civilians were disrupting that well-drilled
response.
"Have you seen any of the auditors?" he asked over the howl of the
alarm.
"No." Uhura's long bronze robe rippled in a gust of Wind. Sulu's pulse
jumped With fear, but when he looked up he saw it was only the turbolift
compartment moving away without closing its outer doors. Another lift
slid into place, and the evacuation continued with barely a pause.
"Maybe they went to a different turbolift."
"But this is the closest one to their quarters."
"They may not know that," she pointed out. "They were told how to
evacuate th
eir area in an emergency. They must have been!" Sulu turned
to look down the empty corridor, tension crawling up his back. He made
his decision abruptly. "Wait here--I'll be right back."
"Hey!" Uhura grabbed his arm with surprising strength, dragging him to a
halt. "Where do you think you're going? The turbolift's that way."
"I'm going to go look for the auditors. If they don't get out soon, the
bulkheads will come down and trap them." Sulu shook off her hand as
gently as he could. Behind them, the turbolift sped away with the last
of their sector's crew, and a third empty compartment took its place. He
swallowed a longing to dive into it. "You stay here and hold the lift
for me. The computer may not send another one down."
Uhura's intelligent dark eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Sulu, are you
trying to make sure I'm safe?"
"Yes," he said frankly. "Because if the bulkheads come down while I'm
still on this deck, I want someone else on board to know about it."
"Oh." She frowned for a moment, then nodded reluctantly. "All right,
you win. Go check the auditors --I'll wait for you here."
"Thanks." Sulu took a deep breath and pushed himself away from the
wall, somehow feeling as if this were zero gravity and he needed the
momentum. He saw Uhura watching him as he rounded the corridor's curve,
her hand poised over the manual controls for the turbolift. She looked
