Worlds in Collision (39 page)

“Scanning personnel records of Montgomery Scott to project hypothetical level of technical proficiency in the reconstruction of organic material synthesizers from duotronic components.”

“And…?”

The computer reset its audio circuits. It sounded like someone clearing her throat. “Message as dictated reads: ‘Effective immediately, I wish to tender my resignation from Star—.' Please proceed.”

Scott sighed. “Thank you, computer.” It was a small victory, but these days Scott was grateful to take any that he could get. He felt it would be a long time before he would taste anything like it again, if ever. He glanced at the wall over his chest of drawers where his bagpipes hung. Twenty meters beyond them was open space. And the captain. And McCoy. And all the rest of those who rightfully belonged on the
Enterprise.
Perhaps by resigning, Spock was acknowledging that McCoy had shown them all the way. It was not logical to expect to uncover the real reasons behind what had happened at Talin IV by battling Starfleet. Perhaps Starfleet wasn't the enemy here. Perhaps there were other enemies, and other ways to find victory.

Scott turned back to the patient viewscreen which displayed the words he had dictated. Though it was difficult for the engineer to admit it, for the first time machinery wasn't enough. He no longer belonged on board the
Enterprise.
What had made this ship so special was her crew and her captain. The spirit of her would live just as well somewhere else, as long as they could be together.

And they would be together again, Scott suddenly realized. They had to be.

Scott smiled, the first time he had felt like it in months. Then he spoke the rest of the words that would free him from Starfleet, so like Spock and Kirk and McCoy and all the rest, he could do what duty demanded of him.

“They musta been sorta crazy, doncha think, mister?” the child asked, wrinkling her face in consternation. She was about eight standard years old, taller than most her age which meant she was probably from one of the smaller Martian cities where the citizens had voted against higher gravity. But the clothes she wore—a lacrosse jersey from one of the intersystem championship leagues sloppily pulled over balloon overalls and red Skorcher moccasins—could have come from child outfitters anywhere from the Venus highdomes to the Triton hollowcells. Sol system, which once had been such a grand adventure, had become one large city, less than one-millionth of a subspace-second across.

Leonard McCoy scratched at the six-week growth of whiskers that was slowly and itchily becoming a beard. It was one thing being back in his home system in a cabin in a nature reserve, but civilization was making him edgy. When had the Moon gotten this built up and civilized, anyway? It wasn't the same as he remembered it had been when he was a boy.

“Doncha think, mister? Huh, mister?”

McCoy looked down at the child standing beside him at the railing. “Don't you know you shouldn't talk to strangers?”

The child blinked at him. “You're not that strange, mister. I talked to an Andorian once. They listen through these feeler things on their heads. They look sorta like they got two blue worms stickin' up from their heads or somethin'.” The child shook her head knowingly. “Now that's strange.”

“Well, young lady, Andorians think we're strange because our ears are squashed to the sides of our heads. In fact, they wonder how we can hear anything. And compared to them, we don't hear a lot.” McCoy decided to spare the child a recitation of the standard frequencies of a typical Andorian's hearing range.

“Wow, do you know any Andorians, mister?”

McCoy was bothered that the child was impressed by the fact that he might have known an Andorian or two in his life. It was such a little thing. Especially considering that the child and McCoy were standing at the viewing railing of Tranquility Park. Fifty meters away beyond the transparent aluminum wall, the spindly-looking second stage of the first crewed vehicle to land on Earth's Moon sat beneath the brilliant, unfiltered sunshine as it had for more than two hundred years. Where McCoy and the child stood had once been an unimaginable frontier, the quest for which had shaped the dreams of an entire century of living, breathing, and hoping human beings.

Those pioneers had come to this dead world in fragile ships powered by chemical rockets and controlled by binary computers only one step removed from an abacus. They had come without the capability for remaining more than a handful of hours, and decades before the development of any technology that could be reasonably utilized here. Why? So they could hop around for a few minutes in constricting, multilayered environmental suits that had been needle-sewn together by hand, and scoop up an unrepresentative few kilos of surface rocks and soil. Now almost two and a half centuries later, the anonymous spot which Armstrong and Aldrin had reached by risking their lives as the final two humans in a chain of thousands who had toiled years toward that goal, had become a holiday resort—a favorite stop for honeymooners and students on day excursions from Earth.

Civilization,
McCoy thought sourly.
The death of dreams.
He narrowed his eyes at the child. “Look, kid…what's your name?”

“Glynis,” she said.

“Well, Glynis, do you know what that is out there by the old flag?”

The child gave an exaggerated nod. “The lower stage of the Lunar Excursion Module,
Eagle,”
she recited. “Launched July 16, oldstyle one nine six nine
C.E
. The first of twelve successful landings on the Moon prior to the building of Base One. Launch authority was…um, the National Space and…no, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Uh, the United States of North…no, just of America.” Glynis grinned happily up at McCoy. “Neil A. Armstrong, Commander. Edwin E. Aldrin, Lunar Excursion Module pilot. Michael Collins, Command Module Pilot. ‘We came in peace for all mankind.' ”

McCoy was impressed. He was never surprised when children could reel off the names of every lacrosse player in the system—along with their favorite colors and breakfast foods, or the complete lyrics and plot nuances of the latest holosaga, but he thought it rare to find a child who had turned her innate talents to the study of history. “That's very good,” he said, and meant it. “Now how does a girl your age happen to know all that?”

The child became very solemn. “I have to.”

McCoy raised an eyebrow. “And why's that?”

“You haveta know that stuff to get into the Academy.”

“Starfleet Academy?”

Glynis nodded again, mouth set, very serious.

“How old are you?” McCoy asked.

“Almost nine.”

“And you already know you want to join Starfleet?”

The child looked puzzled as if she didn't understand why McCoy had asked the question. “I have to,” she said.

“You have to? Why?”

She drew herself up and looked proudly into McCoy's eyes. “I'm going to work on a…starship.”

McCoy heard the slight hesitation in the child's voice as she said that final word, almost as if there was too much magic in it to ever speak the word lightly. He understood. But still…

“You want to work on a starship and you think the Moon pioneers were ‘sorta crazy'?”

Glynis gazed out at the lunar landing stage in the middle of the stark graywhite landscape. “That's nothin' like a starship. It's kinda small, doncha think? And they didn't have enough radiation shielding. And no gravity. And they had to use electricity to run their systems. And—”

McCoy squatted down by the child to bring his eyes level to hers, and held up a finger to quiet her, just for a moment. “You know, a hundred years from now, if they ever build that transporter beam wave guide from the Earth to here and people can visit the Moon in two seconds instead of two hours, little children are going to be saying the same thing about us and how crazy we were because we had to get here in old-fashioned impulse shuttles.”

The child looked skeptical. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” McCoy said. He pointed out to the
Eagle'
s landing stage. “What you have to remember when you look out there is that that machine isn't some flimsy, primitive, radiation-transparent antique.”

“It's not?”

McCoy shook his head. “More than two hundred years ago, when children looked at the
Eagle,
that was
their
starship. And they dreamed about flying on it for all the same reasons that you want to fly on the starships we have today.”

Glynis looked away from McCoy, squinting out through the double-story window overlooking Tranquility Base. “That was sorta all they had back then, wasn't it?”

“But when they launched it, it was the best.”

“And there're going to be better starships a hundred years from now?”

McCoy nodded.

“But the ones we have now…they're the best, right?”

“Yes. They are.” McCoy was hit with a sudden wave of sadness and he wasn't surprised.

The child thought about that answer for a moment, and McCoy could almost see her rearranging facts within her mind, pulling out pictures of old-fashioned spacecraft and sticking them beside state-of-the-art
Constitution
-class vessels.

“I wonder what it was like to live back then,” she said.

McCoy straightened up again. “Just the same as it is to live now.” He smiled at the child's look of surprise. “The spaceships change, but people don't. That's one of the things you'll learn in the Academy.”

After he had spoken, McCoy realized that he had hesitated slightly when he had mentioned the Academy—as if it, too, like “starship” to the child, was more than a word to him.

Glynis had heard it, as well. “Hey, mister. What do
you
do?”

McCoy scratched at his beard again. “Me? I'm retired.”

“Yeah? From what?”

McCoy chewed on his lip for a moment. Five minutes with this child was turning out to be more enlightening than two weeks watching pine trees grow in Yosemite. “From Starfleet,” he said.

Glynis's mouth dropped open and her eyes widened. “Why? Why would anyone retire from…Starfleet?” Such magic in the way she said that word.

McCoy stared out across the lunar vista. Beyond what had once been the final frontier, he could make out the domes of the civilian spaceport, glinting white against the black sky of the Moon, just like the stars beyond.

“Why, mister?” Glynis asked again. “That's like quitting, isn't it? How could you quit Starfleet? How, mister? Why?”

But McCoy had no answer for her. At least, not yet.

Beside his Starfleet Command gold star, the tribunal judge wore a small IDIC emblem on his black robe. That meant he had studied law on Vulcan. But Uhura didn't care where, when, or for how long anyone had studied anything. She was right and Starfleet was wrong and that's all there was to it.

“Ensign Uhura,” the judge said, his voice echoing against the hard walls of the nondescript Starfleet Lunar Hall of Justice hearing room. “Please approach the bench.”

Alise Chavez, Uhura's legal representative, nodded at her. Chavez was a harried-looking lieutenant junior grade in Starfleet's Justice Division, with long hair spraying out erratically from an improperly fastened clip at the back of her head and a red specialist's tunic that was at least two sizes too large. Uhura's case docket was one of twenty microtape wafers spilling out of the case on the lieutenant's table, so Uhura suspected that a nod of the head was about all the expert guidance she could expect today. She approached the bench, rustling in her one-size-fits-all, standard-issue, blue prison jumpsuit.

“Ensign Uhura,” the judge intoned. “Do you know why you have been brought before the tribunal today?”

“Yes, sir.” Because it was three standard months to the day since the first time she had been brought before the tribunal.
Let's get on with it,
she thought.

“Then I won't have to go into a long speech about your oath as a Starfleet officer—”

I'm an
ensign,
now, you bald-headed, red-eyed
—

“…nor about your duty to uphold the laws of the Articles of the United Federation of Planets.”

“I am aware of both my oath and my duty, sir.”

The judge looked down at his screenpad and scrawled some notes.
Probably checking off his list,
Uhura thought,
just like every other time.

The judge cleared his throat. “Ensign Uhura, I am required to ask you if, at this time, you have reconsidered your refusal to sign the document displayed before you.” He pressed a control on his screenpad and the disputed document appeared on the viewscreen built into the front of his high desk, directly before Uhura's eyes.

“Yes, sir,” Uhura said formally, “I have reconsidered my refusal to sign that document.”

The judge's eyes blinked in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“I have reconsidered it most carefully.”

“You have?” He leaned forward, hands on either side of his screenpad. In Uhura's last eleven appearances before the other judges who had rotated through this tribunal, all she had volunteered were variations on the word no. “And…?” he prompted.

“And after due reconsideration, I once again refuse to sign it because it is a false and—”

The judge pushed down on his desk's gavel switch and a low rush of white noise sprang from hidden speakers, preventing anything else Uhura said from being recorded by the reporting computer. But it didn't prevent her from speaking until she was finished.

“Are you quite done, Ensign?” the judge asked when Uhura's mouth had finally closed.

“Well, that's up to you, isn't it, sir?”

The judge's thick eyebrows quivered in irritation but he touched his fingers to the IDIC symbol he wore and Uhura could see his lips forming silent Vulcan phonemes as he repeated a calming koan.

“Very well, Ensign. Since you have seen fit to abrogate your sworn oath and—”

Uhura wasn't going to let him get away with it. She wasn't going to let anyone get away with it. “Your honor! I object!”

The judge shook his head and looked over at the overworked lieutenant j.g. “Lieutenant Chavez, could you please remind your client,
once again,
that she is the prisoner and cannot object.”

Chavez hastily began to get up from behind her table but Uhura stared her down, smiling tightly, until the lieutenant lost the will to speak and sank back into her chair. After three months of dealing with Uhura, she knew no one could win an argument with the communications specialist once her mind was made up. And right now it was most certainly made up.

The judge began again. “Ensign Uhura, this tribunal, duly empowered by the authority of Starfleet Command, has found that you have abrogated your sworn oath of allegiance….” He paused, but Uhura said nothing, for now. “And have consistently displayed your contempt for this court and its authority.”

You got that right,
Uhura thought.

The judge tapped a finger against the side of his screenpad and Uhura wondered what the man's Vulcan instructors would say about the telltale sign indicating that not everything was under control.

“Ensign, for three months you have defied the authority of this tribunal. First, by your refusal to testify during the board of inquiry hearing into the events at Talin IV—”

“Their minds were made up from the beginning!”

The judge glared but didn't stop talking.
“And now,
by refusing to sign this statement confirming your actions as recorded by the
Enterprise'
s log tapes. For three months you have been held in detention as punishment for that show of contempt. And now, unfortunately, as we are not at war and the charges against you do not pertain to the regulations covering vital secrets or mutiny, this tribunal no longer has the authority to continue your imprisonment.”

The judge looked steadily at Uhura. “You do realize that there will be no going back after this?”

“The document is false. The conclusions are wrong.” The judge held his finger over the gavel button but Uhura said nothing more.

“Very well.” He signed his name on the bottom of the screenpad and began speaking in a rapid monotone. “Ms. Uhura, acting under the authority of Starfleet Command general regulations in peacetime, this tribunal declares you discharged from the rights, duties, and privileges of a non-commissioned officer in Starfleet. Said discharge to be listed on your record with dishonor. Your accumulated pay, pension, and education credits are forfeit. You are prohibited from ever accepting civilian employment with Starfleet, and are likewise prohibited from accepting employment with any civil branch of the United Federation of Planets, its member governments and bodies, for a period of ten standard years. You are reminded that your oath pertaining to safeguarding the classified information which might or might not have been divulged to you during the period of your service is still in effect, along with all pertinent publication and other dissemination restrictions. Failure to abide by the conditions of that oath and those restrictions may render you liable for both civil and/or criminal charges.” The judge signed his name one final time. “This tribunal stands adjourned.”

The judge slipped his screenpad under his arm and left the hearing room without looking back. Uhura went to the desk where Lieutenant Chavez gathered up her stack of brightly colored microtapes.

“What's the next step?” Uhura asked.

Chavez shrugged as she quickly checked the time readout on her portable computer screen. “You go to the quartermaster and get your own clothes back. And past that, you tell me. You got what you wanted, didn't you? You're a civilian.” Her words were hurried. She had places to go.

“If I had signed that piece of garbage I would have had no choice but to resign. And all a resignation gives me is a chance to reconsider my decision within a six-month grace period. As if they'd let me back. At least I'm able to appeal a dishonorable discharge.”

Chavez sighed as she slipped her computer into her case and closed it. “Come on, Uhura. You already know how that's going to play out. You file your appeal and they're going to assign you someone with even less experience and training than I have.” She stood up to leave.

But Uhura placed her hands on Chavez's case, to keep the lieutenant in place for a few moments longer. “Chavez, I
am
getting someone to represent me.”

“A civilian attorney? To argue a case against a Starfleet tribunal? You know how much something like that's going to cost? And you heard the conditions of discharge: You're going to be lucky to get work within ten parsecs of here to pay for it.”

“I mean, I'm getting someone else in Starfleet to represent me.”

Chavez stared at her in dismay. “Uhura, haven't you listened to a word I've said in the past three months? As far as the Admiralty's concerned, you don't exist. The whole Talin incident, the
Enterprise
Five, it's all being beamed out to a dust cloud.”

“I'm not letting them do that,” Uhura stated stubbornly.

“You're still not facing the facts! You were a fast-track officer on the best damned ship in Starfleet. There are two admirals at Command who came up through communications just like you. You had pull, tradition, a career path, top brass in your camp, and it didn't help you!” Chavez held her fist to her chest. “Look at what the Justice Division has done to you! I'm a junior grade who's spent the last year here on the Moon defending red shirts for slamboxing in bars on shore leave. Don't you get it? There's no one left in Starfleet who wants to have anything at all to do with you. Your captain didn't order any of you to do what you did, so you have no excuse. And
you
were the one who pressed the button that helped destroy a world. An entire world.” Chavez pulled her case away from Uhura. “It's over, Uhura. No one in Starfleet will appeal anything for you.”

“Spock will,” Uhura said.

“The Vulcan?”

“He's been assigned to Technology Support in San Francisco. He's going to represent me.”

Chavez reached out to take Uhura's hand, some sympathy still in her eyes.

“Uhura, he resigned.”

“What?”

“Yesterday. It was in the ComSys updates. The last of the Five to go. He can't appear before any Starfleet tribunal as a civilian. Unless he's got a law degree.
And
has Sol system accreditation.”

“But…” Uhura was speechless. She and Spock had talked less than a tenday ago. He had helped her plan her entire strategy from the beginning. He had told her to force them to give her a dishonorable discharge so he could launch an appeal and bring the whole case to open court. “Spock wouldn't abandon me…he couldn't.”

Chavez patted Uhura's hand. “All of you people from the
Enterprise
have to start your lives again. The Vulcan must have realized that. By getting out, and leaving you behind, he did…the logical thing.”

Uhura pulled her hand away. She would not be patronized any more than she'd be railgunned into accepting blame for what had happened at Talin IV. “He is not ‘the Vulcan'! His name is Spock and he's one of the most honorable beings I know.”

Chavez nodded her head wearily, not wanting to argue anymore. “Matters of honor are seldom logical, Uhura. After having worked with a Vulcan for so long, I would have thought you'd understand them better than most.” She tucked her case under her arm.

“I understand everything that's gone on better than any of you blinder-wearing, rule-quoting, Starfleet drones do! Here
and
on Talin!”

Chavez stepped away, her sympathy turning to pity. “But except for a few student protest groups, no one wants to know about Talin anymore, Uhura. They just want to forget. It's over. Accept it. It'll make your life a lot easier.”

Uhura's hands knotted into fists at her sides. “The only thing I'm prepared to accept is the truth.”

Shaking her head, Chavez walked toward the hearing room's doors and they slid open before her. But before she left, she stopped and turned. “What I can't figure out, is how you could have spent so much time in Starfleet, seen the way it operates, and still believe that you might have a chance against the systems that make it work as well as it does. I mean, what makes you think you stand a chance? Why keep fighting the inevitable?”

Uhura's voice was solid and strong in the silent room. “Because I once served under Captain James T. Kirk on the best damned ship in Starfleet,” she said. “And I
will
serve with him on that ship again. And God help anyone, or any admiral, who gets in my way.”

“Ask a simple question,” Chavez said softly, then stepped through the doorway, her work at an end.

But for Uhura, it was time to begin.

*   *   *

The Starfleet Lunar Hall of Justice in Oceanview was one of those peculiar government buildings that seemed to have no particular style, other than a quest for monumentalism. It was close to a century old and had been built in the twilight of Earth's cultural fascination with anything Centauran. Unfortunately, the fact that it had been built on the Moon under natural gravity—long since augmented to Earth normal throughout the city's business sections—had inspired the architects to alter the proportions of loadbearing arches whose original graceful dimensions had been dictated by a more massive planet. In addition, the building's airy roof gardens were situated five meters beneath the inner surface of a dingy green pressure dome instead of under spacious blue skies, further removing it from the Centauran ideals of open post-harmony defensism.