Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (47 page)

“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 coming 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.

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.

“Admiral,” Chekov said, “we’re losing precious time.”

“What course, please, Admiral?” Sulu said, entering a course for the Mutara sector.

Kirk glanced from Chekov, to Sulu, to Scott.

“Mister Scott—?”

“I’d be grateful, Admiral, if ye’d give the word.”

Kirk hesitated, then nodded sharply. “My word is given. Gentlemen, may the wind be at our backs. Stations, please!”

Kirk took his own place in the command seat.

“Clear all moorings….”

Sulu centered his attention on the impulse engines. They had not, of course, received the overhaul Scott had wished to give them, and they responded hesitantly, irritably, erratically, just as they had on the way in. The warp drive would be equally rocky.

The ship backed hesitantly from its slip and swung toward the entrance of Spacedock.

“Engage auto systems,” Kirk said. “One quarter impulse power.”

The
Enterprise
reached the berth in which
Excelsior
lay. Sulu gave the new ship a single glance and pushed the longing, and the temptation for regret, out of his mind.

Sulu started hearing consternation over the communications channels, as sensors and alarms and Starfleet personnel on late-night watch began to realize what was happening. The
Enterprise
drifted like a ghost ship past
Excelsior,
toward the huge closed spacedoors. He heard the beginning of a command to secure them, a command that was abruptly and rudely cut off by a screech of static. A moment later a raucous voice spilled over the channel. Sulu recognized the voice of a popular comedian.

He grinned. Everything Uhura did, she did with flair and humor. Crossing Starfleet channels with those of a system-wide entertainment network might well produce an interesting hybrid.

Quite, as Spock would have said, fascinating.

“One minute to spacedoors,” Sulu said.

McCoy fidgeted on the upper bridge level.

“You just gonna
walk
through them?”

“Calm yourself, Bones,” Kirk said.

“Sir,” Chekov said, “Starfleet Commander Morrow, on emergency channel. He orders you to surrender vessel.”

“No reply, Mister Chekov. Maintain your course.”

Sulu set the communications monitor to steady scan. At one channel it paused long enough for him to hear, “What the hell do you mean,
yellow alert?
How can you have a
yellow alert
in
Spacedock?
”

The soundtrack of an old movie cut off the reply: “Who
are
those guys?”

The one thing Uhura could not do was prevent people on Spacedock from seeing what was happening. Everyone at the space station knew the
Enterprise
was being decommissioned. By now they would have begun to notice something distinctly odd.

“Thirty seconds to spacedoors,” Sulu said.

“Sir,
Excelsior
is powering up with orders to pursue,” Chekov said.

Sulu switched the viewscreen to an aft scan. They all watched
Excelsior
come alive, preparing for the chase.

“My gods,” McCoy said. “It’s gaining on us just sitting there.”

Sulu switched back to a forward scan. The spacedoors filled the viewscreen completely.

“Steady, steady,” Kirk said. “All right, Mister Scott?”

“Sir—?” Scott answered distractedly, for his concentration was fixed on smoothing out his infiltration routine.

“The
doors,
Mister Scott.”

“Aye, sir, workin’ on it.”

Sulu had his hands on the controls to apply full reverse thrust when the doors finally cracked open and revealed the bright blackness of space beyond. The doors slid aside for the bow of the
Enterprise.
With a hands-breadth to spare, they were free.

“We have cleared spacedoors,” Sulu said.

“Full impulse power!”

Sulu laid it on. The
Enterprise
shuddered and plunged ahead.

Behind them,
Excelsior
burst out into space.

Uhura had left the channels clear enough for the
Enterprise
to know what was going on, but she was also insuring that no ship could be sent after them by radio or subspace communications.

All they had to do was elude
Excelsior.

“
Excelsior
closing to four thousand meters, sir,” Chekov said.

“Mister Scott,” Kirk said, “we need everything you’ve got now.”

“Aye, sir. Warp drive standing by.”

“Kirk!” Captain Styles’ voice burst through the chatter and static. “Kirk, you do this and you’ll never sit in a captain’s chair again!”

Kirk ignored him; Sulu gritted his teeth. In the background of the channel he could hear
Excelsior
preparing to apply a tractor beam.

“Warp speed, Mister Sulu,” Kirk said.

“Warp speed.”

The ship collected itself and lurched into warp.

Excelsior
’s communications switched to subspace.

“No way, Kirk,” Styles said. “We’ll meet you coming back! Prepare for warp speed! Stand by transwarp drive!”

Damned showoff,
Sulu thought. Excelsior
could catch the
Enterprise
with warp speed alone; with transwarp it would overshoot its quarry and, indeed, have to come back to meet it.

As the
Enterprise
struggled toward the Mutara sector, Sulu aimed the visual sensors aft. On the viewscreen, the tiny point of light that was
Excelsior
shone white behind them. Scott watched with a self-satisfied smirk. Sulu glanced at Scott, and wondered.

Excelsior
’s aura blue-shifted as the new ship accelerated toward them.

The blue-shift died, and the ship’s light reddened as the
Enterprise
accelerated away from it. Sulu’s sensors revealed
Excelsior
to be intact, but without power. He felt more than a little ambivalent about what was happening.

“
Excelsior
is adrift in space,” he said.

When Captain Styles’ call for a tow came through from
Excelsior,
Uhura intercepted and damped it, feeling considerable satisfaction.

Take over Hikaru’s ship, will you?
she thought.
You can just sit there and stew for a while.

“Commander, let me out of here!”

She ignored Heisenberg’s shouts and his pounding on the door, until she was afraid he was making so much noise that someone else would come along and hear him.

“Heisenberg!” she shouted. “Shut up!”

“Let me out! What the hell is going on?”

“If you don’t be quiet I’ll use this phaser on you!” She continued working. Some of the safeguards had come into play against her. Each new disruption was increasingly difficult to accomplish. Tracers had already been sent out. She had only a few minutes left before she must flee, if she were to complete one final self-appointed task before the authorities caught up with her. She did not doubt that by this time tomorrow she would be in jail.

“Commander,” Heisenberg said, not shouting this time. “What’s going on? Maybe I can help.”

She stopped replying; she had enough already to occupy her attention.

“Commander Uhura, please, if you’d just told me—”

He sounded sincere, but she did not know him well enough to know how good an act he could put on. Besides, she needed no help. If he was looking for excitement, he would surely find it if she let him out of the closet—he would find it for a few minutes, and perhaps spend the rest of his life regretting it, or trying to make up for it. The best thing she could do for him was leave him where he was. That way, it would be clear to Starfleet that he had nothing to do with helping James Kirk steal the
Enterprise.
Heisenberg might find himself embarrassed to be locked up by an officer whose career was winding down…but it would be less embarrassing than a court-martial.

She had done what she could here. She set the transporter controls on automatic. Starfleet would be able to trace her by the coordinates on the console, but by then she hoped it would not matter.

“Heisenberg!” she said.

“What?” he said irritably.

“Somebody will be along to let you out in a few minutes. I’m sorry I had to lock you up, Lieutenant. It was for your own good.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Uhura stepped up on the transporter and dematerialized.

Mister Scott paused behind Sulu, at the helm. On the viewscreen,
Excelsior
dwindled and vanished behind them.

“I dinna damage thy ship permanently, lad,” Scott said softly.

Sulu glanced up. What to do to
Excelsior
had been left up to Scott, and it was a relief for Sulu to know the change was temporary. He nodded, grateful for the reassurance.

“Mister Scott,” Kirk said, “you’re as good as your word.”

“Aye, sir. The more they overthink the plumbin’, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”

There are always a few flaws in a new application of technology, Sulu thought.

“Here, Doctor,” Scott said to McCoy. He took his hand out of his pocket and handed McCoy a dull gray wafer. “A souvenir, as one surgeon to another.”

McCoy accepted it. His hand shook slightly. He clearly had no idea what it was.

“I took it out o’
Excelsior
’s main transwarp computer,” Scott said. “I knew Styles surely wouldna be able to resist trying it out.”

“Nice of you to tell me in advance,” McCoy said.

Kirk hooked his arm over the back of his command chair. “That’s what you get for missing staff meetings, Doctor,” he said. He surveyed the bridge, taking in everyone. “Gentlemen, your work today was outstanding. I intend to recommend you all for promotion.” His voice turned wry as he added, “In whatever fleet we end up serving.”