Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (74 page)

“That’s a strange thing to hear from somebody who accused me of being in military intelligence.”

“I still don’t have a clue who you are!” she said angrily. “You wouldn’t want to show me around your spaceship, would you?”

“It wouldn’t be my first choice, no.”

“So. There we are.”

“Let me tell you something,” Kirk said, his voice suddenly hard. “I’m here to bring two humpback whales into the twenty-third century. If I have to, I’ll go to the open sea to get them. But I’d just as soon take yours. It’d be better for me, better for you…and better for them.”

“I bet you’re a damn good poker player,” Gillian said.

“Think about it,” Kirk said. “But don’t take too long, because we’re out of time when they take your whales away. If you change your mind, this is where I’ll be.”

“Here? In the park?”

“Right.”

He kissed her, a quick, light touch of his lips to hers.

“I don’t know what else to say to convince you.”

“Say good-night, Kirk.”

“Good-night.” He left the Land Rover and strode through the harsh circle of illumination cast by the street lamp.

Gillian hesitated. She wanted to believe him; she almost wanted to join in his attractive craziness and turn it into a
folie à deux.
Instead, she sensibly shoved the Land Rover into gear and stepped on the gas.

A strange shimmery light reflected from her rearview mirror. She braked and glanced out the back window, wondering what she had seen.

The street lamp must have flickered, for it cast the only illumination over the meadow. Whatever had caused the shimmery effect had disappeared.

And so had Kirk. The meadow was empty.

Spock watched Admiral Kirk re-form on the transporter platform.

“Did you accomplish your aims in your discussion with Doctor Taylor, Admiral?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Admiral Kirk said. “I told her the truth, but she doesn’t believe me. Maybe you should try to talk to her. Without your disguise.”

“Do you think that wise, Admiral?”

“It wouldn’t make any difference. She’d just explain you away with plastic surgery,” he said with an ironic smile. “I wish she’d stop explaining me away. As it is, when we beam the whales on board, all Gillian will ever be sure of is that they’ve disappeared. She won’t know if they lost their transmitters, or if they died, or if the whalers killed them.” He blew out his breath in frustration. “What’s our status?”

“The tank will be finished by morning.”

“That’s cutting it closer than you know. What about team two?”

“We have received no word since their beam-in. We can only wait for their call.”

“Damn!” Kirk said. “Dammit!”

Spock wondered why Kirk employed two similar words of profanity, rather than repeating the same one twice or using two entirely different ones. No doubt the admiral had been correct in his statement that Spock did not yet know how to hang that part of the language.

“We’ve been so lucky!” Kirk said. “We have the two perfect whales in our hands, but if we don’t move quickly, we’ll lose them.”

“Admiral,” Spock said, “Doctor Taylor’s whales understand our plans. I made certain promises to them, and they agreed to help us. But if we cannot locate them, my calculations reveal that neither the tank nor the
Bounty
can withstand the power of a frightened wild whale. In that event, the probability is that our mission will fail.”

“Our
mission!
” Admiral Kirk shouted. He swung toward Spock, his shoulders hunched and his fists clenched.

Spock drew back, startled.

“Our
mission!
Goddamn it, Spock, you’re talking about the end of life on Earth! That includes your father’s life! You’re half human—haven’t you got any goddamn feelings about
that?
” He glared at Spock, then turned, infuriated, and strode down the corridor.

Spock lunged one step after him. “Jim—!” He halted abruptly. The admiral vanished around a corner. He had not heard Spock’s protest, and for that Spock felt grateful. He did not understand why he had made it. Spock did not understand the terribly un-Vulcan impulse within him that had led him to make it. He should have repressed it almost before he became aware of it. That was the Vulcan way. James Kirk’s anger should have no effect on Spock of Vulcan, for anger was illogical. More than that, it was useless. It led to confusion and misunderstanding and inefficiency.

He knew all that as well as he knew anything. Why, then, did he himself feel anger toward the admiral? How could James Kirk’s reaction cause a Vulcan so much pain?

He sought some explanation for Kirk’s fury. Worrying about what would happen to Earth if the
Bounty
did not return could have no effect on the fate of the planet; nor could worrying about Sarek’s fate save the elder Vulcan. What did Kirk expect him to do? Even if he did feel concern and anguish, what possible benefit could be extracted from revealing the emotions to his superior officer, and humiliating himself with his lack of control?

Spock drew a deep breath, trying to calm himself, wrestling with his confusion and the emotions he could not continue to deny. He wanted to return to his quarters; he wanted to meditate and concentrate until he drew himself completely back into control. But he could not. Too much work remained to be done.

Trying to pretend nothing had happened, or at least that Kirk’s outburst had not affected him, Spock squared his shoulders, slipped his hands inside the wide sleeves of his robe, and followed the admiral toward the engine room.

Uhura kept her eye on the tricorder readings as Pavel took a readout on the collector’s charge for the tenth time in as many minutes. The process was taking far longer than Mister Scott had estimated. Uhura and Pavel had been at the reactor for nearly an hour. If their luck held for another ten minutes…

In the radar room of the aircraft carrier
Enterprise,
the radar operator started a routine equipment test. The image on the screen broke up. Frowning, he fiddled with the controls. He managed to get a clear screen for a moment, then lost it.

“What the hell—? Say, Commander?”

The duty officer joined him. When he saw the screen, he, too, frowned. “I thought you were just running a test program.”

“Aye, sir. But we’re getting a power drain through the module. It’s coming from somewhere in the ship.”

The operator kept trying to track down the problem. The duty officer hung over his shoulder until the phone rang and he had to go answer it.

“CIC, Rogerson…. Yes, Chief, we’re tracking it here, too. What do you make of it?” When he spoke again, his voice was tight. “You sure? Check the videoscan. I need a confirm.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “He thinks there’s an intruder in one of the MMRs.”

In the reactor access room, the collector’s hum rose in pitch and suddenly ceased.

“Hah!” Pavel said. “Finished.” He detached the machine from the wall.

Uhura opened her communicator. “Scotty, we’re ready to beam out.” Static replied to her message. “Scotty? Uhura here, come in please.” She waited. “Come in please. Scotty, do you read?”

“Aye, lass.” Static blurred the response. “I hear ye. My transporter power’s down to minimum. I must bring ye in one at a time. I’ll take you first. Stand by.”

Pavel shoved the collector into Uhura’s hands.

The beam surrounded her. Its frequency sounded wrong. The usual cool tingle felt like thousands of pinpricks. Finally she vanished.

Pavel waited patiently for the
Bounty
’s transporter to recharge and sweep him from this place. Silence, after the constant high-pitched hum of the energy collector, made him nervous. The reactor’s flashing red light gave him a headache.

He started at the sudden shrill of a Klaxon alarm. People shouted between its bleats. Pavel snapped open his communicator.

“Mister Scott,” he said, “how soon will transporter be ready? Mister Scott? Hello?”

“Chekov, can ye hear me?” Scott’s voice was all but unintelligible through the static.

“Mister Scott, now would be good time—”

The hatch clanged open. A large man leaped into the doorway, an equally large weapon held at the ready and pointing at Pavel. He entered the access chamber. Other large men, all in camouflage uniforms, came in after him.

“Freeze!” the leader shouted.

Pavel looked at him curiously. “Precisely what does this mean,” he said, “freeze?”

Pavel tried to pretend he did not care about his communicator, while at the same time he tried to stay within reach of it and hoped desperately that they would not take it away to disassemble it. If he could get ten seconds with the communicator in his hands, he might still escape. But if his captors opened it improperly, it would self-destruct.

Unfortunately, the guards did not look like the type to give him the chance to grab his equipment.

He felt foolish. Not only did they have his communicator, but they had his phaser. They even had his identification, because he had neglected to leave it safely on board the
Bounty.
To make matters worse, he had worn his phaser underneath his jacket, out of reach while the guards covered him with weapons—primitive weapons, perhaps, but powerful at close range. Now he was trapped.

A uniformed interrogator asked him again who he was and who he worked for.

“I am Pavel Chekov,” he said. “The rest I cannot tell you.”

The interrogator swore softly under his breath. A dark-haired man in civilian dress entered the room. He wore dark spectacles that hid his eyes. The interrogator joined him.

“If the FBI knew this was going to happen,” he said angrily, “why didn’t you warn us?”

“We didn’t know! It’s a coincidence! The report came from a nut. He spies on his neighbors and anybody else he can think of and then calls my office and tries to tell me about them. It’s embarrassing.”

“But he knew—”

“It’s a coincidence!” the FBI agent said again. “Watch.” Looking disgusted, he approached Pavel. “We caught your friend,” he said.

Pavel started. “But—that is impossible!”

The FBI agent turned pale under his tan. “Your black South African friend.”

“She is not from south of Africa,” Pavel said. “Bantu Nation is—” He stopped. “You did not catch her. You are fooling me.”

“Then you weren’t alone.” The FBI agent looked stunned.

“Yes I was,” Pavel said.

The agent left him alone with the guards.

Humiliated by having given his captors evidence of Uhura’s existence, Pavel wished the interrogators would chop off his head, or shoot him, or whatever they did to prisoners in the twentieth century.

Would serve me right for stupidity,
he thought.
If twentieth-century people shoot me, then Admiral Kirk will not have to be concerned with me. He can rescue whales, take
Bounty
back home, and stop probe.

He imagined Starfleet’s memorial service for Pavel Chekov, fallen hero who had helped save Earth. Admiral Kirk delivered his eulogy. He took some comfort from his fantasy.

His communicator beeped. He snatched at it. One of the guards grabbed him and pushed him back. The interrogator and the FBI agent hurried across the room.

“Let’s get rid of that thing,” the interrogator said. “It might be a bomb.”

“It’s not a bomb,” said the FBI agent, the man who had fooled him.

“How do you know?”

He shrugged. “It just isn’t. It doesn’t
look
like a bomb. You develop a feel for these things.”

“Uh-huh. Like you develop a feel for loony informants who invent Russian agents and black South African spies.”

The agent blushed. “Look, if it were a bomb, our terrorist here would either be sweating, or he’d be threatening us with it.”

Pavel wished he had thought of that, but it was too late now.

“Maybe.”

“Shall I prove it?” He reached for the communicator.

“No. Leave it alone. I’ve got somebody from demolition and somebody from electronics coming down to check it out.”

“Suit yourself.”

Pavel knew that somehow he had to get himself and his equipment out of there before anybody had a chance to inspect it and destroy it. Even his I.D. was causing a good bit of comment.

“Can I see that again?” The FBI agent picked up Chekov’s I.D., inspected it, and glanced up again.

“Starfleet?” he said. “United Federation of Planets?”

“I am Lieutenant Commander Pavel Andrei’ich Chekov, Starfleet, United Federation of Planets,” Pavel said.

“Yes,” the dark-haired agent said sarcastically. “And my name is Bond. All right, Commander, you want to tell us anything?”

“Like what?” Pavel said.

“Like who you really are and what you’re doing here and what this stuff is.” He gestured to the phaser and the communicator, lying useless on the table just out of Chekov’s reach.

“My name is Pavel Andrei’ich Chekov,” he said again. “I am lieutenant commander in Starfleet, United Federation of Planets. Service number 656-5827B.”

The interrogator sighed. “Let’s take it from the top.”

“The top of what?” Pavel asked curiously.

“Name?”

“My name?”

“No,” the interrogator said. The sarcasm had returned to his tone. “
My
name.”

“Your name is Bond,” Pavel said.

“My name is
not
Bond!”

“Then I do not know your name,” Pavel said, confused.

“You play games with me, and you’re through!”

“I am?” Pavel said, surprised. “May I go now?”

With a scowl of exasperation, the agent who had claimed to be named Bond, then denied it, turned his back on Pavel and joined the interrogator.

“What do you think?”

Pavel edged toward the table on which his phaser lay.

The interrogator glared poisonously at Pavel, who pretended he had never moved.

“I think he’s a Russian.”

“No
kidding.
He’s a Russian, all right, but I think he’s…developmentally disabled.”

“We’d better call Washington.”

“Washington?” the agent said. “I don’t think there’s any need to call Washington. I don’t know how this guy got onto your boat—”

“Ship. It’s a ship. And there’s nothing wrong with the security on the
Enterprise.
”