STAR TREK: TOS - Prime Directive Page 6

  McCoy tugged on Uhura’s arm to get her walking again. “Starfleet doesn’t go in for cover-ups, Uhura. The preliminary board hearing was a public forum and the update services got the full story out. There’s no sign that Starfleet’s trying to hide anything, even after the fact.”

  “But, Doctor, they didn’t want to court-martial you—”

  “That’s because they said I didn’t do anything. But I was on the ship. I would have ...” He broke off, feeling his blood pressure soar.

  “But they didn’t want to court-martial the captain, either—or anyone. They just forced us all to ... resign. Except for me.”

  “Careful here,” McCoy warned as they came to the edge of the civic dome and a large caution display warned that they were entering a zone of natural gravity. The sudden stomach dip into point one seven gee wasn’t quite as bad as going into free fall, but it was close enough for McCoy. As far as he was concerned, even cycling down to point nine gee was one point variation too much.

  He let go of Uhura’s hand so they could both use the guide rails set up for tourists and, he was sorry to read on the signs, for seniors. Meanwhile, a flurry of youngsters went bounding back and forth through the brightly illuminated interdome tunnel like giant rabbits on cordrazine. The automatic safety system’s voice droned on nonstop to tell the children they were moving at too high a velocity for public safety.

  As he moved stodgily along, feeling the breeze created by the bouncing youngsters, McCoy found himself thinking of the old two-dees the first Moon explorers had taken on their brief visits here, and during the construction of Base One. What the doctor always found remarkable on those tapes was that almost within seconds of their first arrival, the explorers had all instinctively [53] begun hopping like these children, and that this type of locomotion was still common in Moon-normal gee fields today. McCoy marveled that the human body was so adaptable, not just for the Moon but for a thousand other worlds as well. It was a body designed to be propelled wherever its mind pushed it. No matter what. He thought about the young girl again.

  “Well, don’t you think that seems suspicious, Doctor?” Uhura asked. “Getting us to resign like that?”

  McCoy was momentarily startled and he glanced back as he pulled himself along the railing. “Uhura, if you were in their position, wouldn’t you rather have avoided the publicity of court-martialing the entire bridge crew of one of your most prominent ships when there were easier, less noticeable, and less damaging ways of getting rid of them?” He stopped talking for a moment to catch his breath. Why did lower gravity fields always seem to take more effort to move around in? “What happened at Talin happened. It’s a closed datafile. Starfleet doesn’t want to cover it up. It just doesn’t want to reopen old wounds.”

  Uhura pushed off against the tunnel floor and jumped to McCoy’s side, then pulled down on his arm and forced him under the guide rail where they could stand face-to-face without impeding the flow of others moving through the tunnel. She dropped her voice to an angry whisper. “Doctor McCoy, if I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were talking as if you believed what Starfleet says. You can’t, can you?”

  McCoy hooked his hand under the guide rail and pushed down, increasing the pressure of his feet on the tunnel floor to lessen the feeling that the turbolift his stomach was on was going to hit bottom any second. “Of course, I don’t believe it. I was there, remember? All I’m saying is that I understand Starfleet’s position on this. I’m not saying that I like it or that I’m not going to try and change it, but as somebody somewhere once said, ‘It’s logical.’ ” McCoy put his hand to his eyes as if to clear them. “Lord, I never thought I’d miss hearing those words as much as I do now.”

  [54] Uhura waited for a few moments while McCoy collected himself. Then she spoke again. “Did you know that Mr. Spock had resigned?”

  McCoy’s shocked expression said that he hadn’t.

  “I just found out today myself. My legal advisor told me. Apparently it was in yesterday’s updates.”

  “But he was supposed to help you with your appeal,” McCoy said. “I mean, that was the whole point of you going through this, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Has he contacted you at all? Sent a message through anyone?”

  Uhura shook her head. “When I thought you were late in coming to meet me back there, I thought maybe ... well, that you and he were ... together.”

  “I haven’t heard a thing from Spock since that ... meeting with Hammersmith at Starbase 29.”

  Uhura laughed in spite of her mood. “ ‘Meeting’ wouldn’t be the word I’d use for it.”

  McCoy smiled, too. And then he frowned.

  “What is it?” Uhura asked.

  “Over the past few weeks, I’ve just started to realize how spoiled we all were on the Enterprise. We could talk to anyone virtually anywhere over subspace.”

  “We still can, Doctor McCoy.”

  “But have you seen how long it takes to get online just to send a text-only message to Centaurus? And that’s a local transmission. Good Lord, on the ship we never had to wait to gain access to anything. And we had personal communicators. And shuttles. The computers always ready. Even the transporter.” He groaned. “Listen to me, I’m missing the blasted transporter.”

  “All that technology is available right here. It’s available almost any place.”

  “That’s not my point. Here, we have to present our travel documents, we have to wait in line, go through channels. ... On the Enterprise, why, we could just do something. Spock’s missing? The sensors could do a sweep and you’d have locked [55] onto his Communicator in five seconds flat.” McCoy took his hand away from the guiderail, holding both hands empty before him. “We’re powerless now. It’s so much harder to do just about everything.”

  “Are ... are you giving up?” Uhura’s voice roughened.

  McCoy watched as three children sped past, bouncing high through the tunnel and turning somersaults in midair, their laughter drowning out the staid warnings of the safety system. “On the shuttle here this morning, I thought about it, Uhura. I really did. But at Tranquility ... they didn’t have much. Hell, they didn’t have anything any sane person would have taken into space. But they came here anyway, didn’t they?”

  Uhura nodded her head silently as children played around them on what had once been an airless, lifeless rock.

  “It wasn’t the equipment they built,” McCoy continued, watching the stream of people, humans and otherwise, passing through the tunnel. “It wasn’t the knowledge or the experience they had. It was”—he shook his head, out of words—“... something else.”

  Uhura’s eyes filled with relief. “I know,” she said softly. “I know.”

  “So to answer your question, Lieutenant. No. I am—”

  Uhura placed her hands on McCoy’s shoulders. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “For what?”

  “You called me ‘Lieutenant.’ I’ve missed hearing that.”

  McCoy took a deep breath. The thoughts he had been struggling with these past months at last came together. All because of a child he had happened to meet.

  He thought of being at the end of a chain of thousands, of millions who had worked so hard to push humans so far. How could you quit? the child had asked him, and McCoy had had no answer for her. Because there was no answer. Because he hadn’t quit. He wouldn’t quit.

  “Well, listen carefully, Lieutenant. Because to answer your question: No, I am not giving up. It’s just that ... I’m not quite sure what to do next.”

  [56] “Don’t worry about it, Doctor. Because I do.” Uhura ducked back under the guide rail.

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  Uhura flashed a brilliant smile, then leapt across the tunnel in two four-meter hops to the pedestrian pathways leading back into the civic administration dome.

  McCoy grumbled, pushed himself over the guide rail, and joined her, barely missing being blaste
d out of the tunnel by runaway tumbling children. “So what do we do, Lieutenant?”

  “We go back,” Uhura said.

  McCoy looked down the tunnel. Through the distant opening, he could still see a corner of the squat Hall of Justice. “To Starfleet?” he asked in puzzlement.

  But Uhura shook her head. “Back to where it all began, Doctor. To where the answers are.” She smiled in satisfaction at the look that came over his face. “That’s right,” she said. “To Talin.”

  “The last I heard, Uhura, there was no regular tourist service out to the frontier. How do you suggest we get there?”

  Uhura patted McCoy’s arm. “I told you not to worry. We can find someone who’ll want to take us there.”

  “Talin is blockaded, my dear. And the only ones who will be trying to get past a Starfleet blockade are criminals and pirates.”

  Uhura nodded. “I know that.”

  McCoy glanced around, and lowered his voice. “Just what are you suggesting we do, Uhura?”

  She smiled disarmingly. “Know where we can get a good spaceship cheap?”

  FIVE

  There was only one Klingon ear nailed to the wall above the cash box, so it wasn’t the toughest tavern Sulu had been in on Rigel VIII. But as he ducked beneath the swinging arc of a diburnium barstool, feinted to his right and kicked out to his left, he decided it probably ranked somewhere up in the top two. He didn’t remember much about the other place, except spending the next two days in sickbay.

  Sulu’s kick clipped the charging Orion on the side of his black-maned head and sent the green-skinned alien flying into a flimsy table wisely abandoned by its occupants when the fight broke out. After the splintering crash of brittle Rigellian furniture alloy, there was a brief instant of peace in the tavern. The bartender stayed hidden behind a chrome-plated cabinet of imported liquors, unprotected customers scurried away to the back rooms, one solitary patron in a black cape poured another ale from a pitcher he hadn’t paid for, and the combatants reevaluated each other.

  Sulu crouched in a defensive tesare position. He felt a Vulcan form of self-defense seemed preferable at the moment because he knew there was not a hope in hell of him actually defeating three Orion males in hand-to-hand combat. But sometimes [58] there were other things worth fighting for than immediate victory.

  “No use, human,” Krulmadden said matter-of-factly. The massive Orion shipmaster still sat at the end of the bar, hands folded together, one elbow resting by a slender flask of Ganymede Green. He laughed then, and the gemstones in his teeth flashed as brilliantly as the ones studding the eight rings he wore, lit by the near blinding light from a molecular fusion sunball floating near the rippled metal ceiling five meters above him. The light also gave a glimmering sheen to Krulmadden’s deep green skin and the emerald destin scales of his tunic. “No win for you.”

  Sulu tipped his head at the Orion in a fencer’s salute. “Then I shall lose.” He glanced back at Lasslanlin, the mate who had crushed the table in his fall. He was slowly getting back to his feet, shaking his head, jeweled earrings making gentle chiming music in odd contrast to his 150-kilo bulk. Sulu took a breath and repositioned his foot to prepare for Lasslanlin’s inevitable rush.

  But Artinton raised his head from behind the bar where Sulu had flipped him a few seconds earlier. A string of thick orange blood hung from the second Orion mate’s black beard and he smiled at Sulu, grunting like a Tellarite as he spat out more blood and at least two teeth.

  Now that’s not fair, Sulu thought. I should be able to flatten at least one of these walking mountains.

  “Lasslanlin, stay.” Artinton placed both gargantuan hands on the bar top. It had been cultured from a single cell of ironwood and Sulu swallowed as he heard it creak beneath the Orion’s mass. “This one owes teeth.”

  Sulu’s eyes widened as the second mate vaulted the bar as if he were strapped to antigravs, and landed less than two meters away.

  Oh, great, he’s been toying with me for the past five minutes. He could have had me any—

  Artinton leapt and Sulu reflexively dropped to one knee, angling forward to catch and deflect the Orion’s momentum [59] with his own shoulders and back. But the Orion had expected the move and brought his knee up against Sulu’s neck, jerking him from his planned direction and destroying his balance.

  Sulu’s breath left him with an explosive huff as the Orion drove him to the metal floor. Without being able to breathe under the Orion’s crushing force, the outmatched human tried to flip around and crawl away. But Artinton’s monstrous green hand grabbed the collar of Sulu’s quilted, spun-down jacket and shoved him back against the iron plates of the floor.

  Black stars flickered at the edges of Sulu’s vision and the floor’s rivets tore into his cheek. He struggled to ignore the giant above him and concentrate all he had on breathing again. Just one breath. Half a breath. Anything.

  Sulu felt himself rise up from the floor and spin around under someone else’s control. Artinton’s hand was like a mechanical pincer against Sulu’s neck, lifting him by a fistful of crushed fabric until the toes of his boots left the floor completely.

  At the end of the bar, Krulmadden clapped two beefy hands together, applauding the fight’s conclusion. Sulu edged his eyes to the side as Lasslanlin approached to stand beside his shipmate. The Orions began to laugh, deep and booming. Sulu could feel himself sway with the force of Artinton’s murderous good humor. He tried to swallow again but nothing could get past the pressure of the huge fist against his throat. So much for Vulcan self-defense tactics, Sulu thought. I guess they work better when you’ve had fifty years of practice. As far as he could see, there was only one thing left to do.

  Sulu closed his eyes, wincing as Artinton’s foul breath flooded over him in even louder gales of laughter.

  “Look at little insect!” the Orion howled. “He wants to sleep, forget bad dream!”

  Eyes clenched shut, Sulu sensed the Orion bending closer to him, almost nose to nose. “But not dream, little insect. And not over!”

  “You bet it’s not,” Sulu grunted then jerked his head forward at warp ten. In the next instant he had the triple pleasure of [60] flattening Artinton’s nose like a jellyfish, feeling himself slip from Artinton’s suddenly limp hand, and hearing Artinton’s earsplitting screech of shock.

  Sulu kept his balance as the Orion stumbled backward to bounce against the bar and crumple like a five-atmosphere probe in a fifty-atmosphere pressure chamber.

  But Lasslanlin grabbed Sulu’s shoulder and spun him around. “That ship’s friend, little insect hatchling zygote.”

  “If you’re going to speak Standard then at least get it right!” Sulu shouted as he swung his fist. “I’m a mammal! Get it? A—”

  Lasslanlin caught Sulu’s fist in his black-gloved hand like a tractor beam stopping a meteoroid cold. His forearm didn’t even travel back a centimeter as he absorbed the full force of the blow. What a shame it will be to be taken apart by someone who knows so little about biology, Sulu thought with regret. But at least I got one of them.

  Lasslanlin raised his other hand and a dancerknife suddenly shimmered into view, its blade an indistinct blue humming form.

  Sulu braced himself, but knew he had nothing more to draw on to resist. He wondered if the tavern keeper would let the Orions at least nail his ears above the Klingon’s.

  “First, ears,” Lasslanlin promised. “Then, mammal, the little pair of—” The Orion suddenly jerked, mouth gaping in surprise. He shuddered again as if he had been hit from behind and let go of Sulu’s fist.

  Sulu staggered back, ready to run out from the tavern and disappear into the maze of the spaceport’s back alleys. Lasslanlin didn’t try to stop him. The Orion looked over his shoulder—just in time to catch a gleaming barstool with his face. The dancerknife spun from Lasslanlin’s hand and its blade melted into air before it hit the floor.

  “Stator rell ... ?” Lasslanlin moaned, and then Sulu saw a flurry of five quick
closed-hand chops pepper the Orion’s face, ending with a final full roundhouse to his jaw.

  Lasslanlin’s eyes rolled back beneath his chartreuse lids, his [61] knees wobbled once, then he fell to join his friend on the floor. The unexpected ally who had dropped the Orion stood above the unconscious body. He straightened his black cape, pulled back his cowl, and smiled disarmingly at Sulu. “Karate,” he said, “originally inwented in Russia. Before being stolen by the Chinese.”

  Sulu dropped his hands to his side in relief. “You were supposed to be here an hour ago, Chekov.”

  Chekov pointed over to a small table with a now empty pitcher of ale. “I have been here. All ewening.”

  Sulu raised his hands again in sudden anger. “Then why weren’t you helping me?”

  “Up to now, you didn’t need it.”

  Sulu shook his head, then reached out to hug his friend. Behind them, Krulmadden applauded once again.

  Sulu and Chekov faced the Orion shipmaster together.

  “How touching,” Krulmadden growled. “Two f’deraxt’la, like slavegirls carrying on.”

  Chekov glanced at Sulu. “Does f’deraxt’la mean what I think it means?”

  Sulu nodded. “Three parents, all related, and it rhymes with ‘Federation’ in the Trader’s Tongue.”

  “We cannot let him get away with this.”

  “That’s the point I’ve been trying to make, Chekov.”

  The two humans began to move apart. They had been friends long enough that no words were needed to establish their strategy. It wasn’t the first time in a bar brawl for either of them.

  Krulmadden smiled and slowly moved his hand to scratch his monstrously rounded belly. But when his hand came back to the bar, it held a jewel-encrusted disruptor in a platinum housing. “Suggest move back together, humans. Audition over.”

  “Audition?” Sulu asked.

  Krulmadden waved his hands expansively and his gemstones flared so brightly Sulu saw multicolored afterimages. “This all play. With shipmaster’s mates.” He pursed his lips and shook his head at the unconscious bodies of Lasslanlin and Artinton. [62] “With shipmaster, me.” Sulu cringed as Krulmadden nonchalantly pointed at himself with the barrel of his disrupter. “And two worldkillers in one bar. All play.”