Forged in Fire Page 39

  He stiffened his spine, determined to offer no outward display of discomfiture.

  “Today you stand charged,” Harriman said, “with violating explicit Starfleet orders against entering Klingon space without the Klingon High Council’s express authorization. You may face a general court-martial, depending upon the findings of this board of inquiry. Do you understand that you face the possibility of severe reduction in rank, or even imprisonment, as a consequence of your actions?”

  Sulu stared straight ahead and remained at attention; if he was indeed about to go down in flames, he was determined to be a credit to the uniform if and when it happened.

  “I do, sir,” he said, his voice deep and even.

  Admiral Cartwright spoke next, his brows creased by a deeply disapproving scowl. “And do you have any idea how badly your actions may have jeopardized the Federation Diplomatic Corps’ ongoing efforts at détente with the Klingon Empire?”

  I suppose that remains to be seen, Sulu thought.

  “I understand, Admiral,” he said aloud.

  “You’re aware that you have the right to retain counsel, aren’t you, Commander?” Bennett said.

  “If it pleases this board of inquiry, Admiral, I will waive counsel — unless and until this board calls a general court-martial.”

  If they really are determined to court-martial me, Sulu thought, then they’ll do it whether I’m “lawyered up” or not.

  “Very well,” Admiral Smillie said in his deep, authoritative voice. “Then how do you plead to the charge, Commander?”

  Sulu knew there was little point in entering any plea other than “guilty” or “no contest.” The facts, after all, were not in dispute — only their meaning.

  Sulu drew a deep breath and released it slowly. Keeping his eyes focused on a point somewhere between the skyline behind Harriman’s head and infinity, he opened his mouth to speak.

  A loud, echoing crash sounded from somewhere behind Sulu, interrupting him and momentarily ruining his military bearing. Sulu realized instantly that someone had thrown open one of the heavy wooden doors that led to the chamber’s public gallery.

  “Call security!” Cartwright shouted as he rose from his chair. The male ensign with the bosun’s whistle moved quickly toward a companel mounted on a nearby wall. Though clearly rattled, the female ensign remained in her seat and continued using her tricorder to record everything that was transpiring.

  As the other admirals rose, Sulu turned toward whoever had just entered the room.

  “Belay that order,” Harriman shouted to the male ensign. “Stand down.”

  “Go ahead and call your security men, Admiral!” Ambassador Kamarag said with undisguised anger. “You’ll need them all, and more, if you intend to keep me out of this chamber!”

  Dressed in his full Klingon diplomatic armor, Kamarag stormed directly toward the room’s center, his features set and determined, his forehead ridges looking hard enough to cut dilithium even through the bandages that still partially obscured them. His large body’s stomping momentum constituted an all but implacable force of nature.

  “What is the meaning of this intrusion, Ambassador?” Nogura demanded with equal anger.

  The Klingon ambassador came to a stop beside Sulu and addressed the board of inquiry. “Captains Kang, Koloth, and Kor have all given me full reports on Commander Sulu’s recent actions in Klingon space.” He paused to point a mailed index finger directly at Sulu. “Need I remind this august body that this man’s deeds led directly to the crippling of a notorious criminal organization devoted to piracy and terror?”

  Harriman’s eyes blazed, though he spoke in carefully measured tones. “We are aware of the events of the past several weeks. Every member of this board of inquiry has read Commander Sulu’s log entries since circumstances forced him to assume command of Excelsior.”

  “Circumstances?” Kamarag said, lowering his hand as he displayed an impressively feral-looking array of sharpened teeth. “It was the craven actions of a pirate crimelord and terrorist, not circumstances, that relieved Excelsior of her captain. Your Commander Sulu merely did what his duties required of him. His decision to step into the breach not only resulted in the capture or killing of a large number of the criminal organization’s members, it also compromised one of its major staging posts — in addition to providing us with enough advance warning of an impending bioweapons attack against Qo’noS to enable my government to greatly minimize the damage that was done.”

  “With all due respect, Ambassador,” Cartwright said, “you are out of your depth here. Commander Sulu stands accused of extremely serious offenses.”

  Kamarag nodded. “So my government has informed me. Knowing how highly you Earthers value peace, I had no doubt that ‘jeopardizing the prospects for Klingon-Federation détente’ or some other similarly worded offense would rank quite high on the list of charges.”

  “You’re quite correct, Ambassador,” Harriman said. “But this is an internal Federation matter. Neither you nor anyone else in your government may cast a vote as to the disposition of this case.”

  Though Kamarag acknowledged Harriman’s point with another nod, he still seemed to give no ground. “That is as it may be, Admiral. You, however, must understand that no less a personage than Chancellor Kesh of the Klingon High Council credits Commander Sulu’s actions with having materially contributed to averting a diplomatic breach between our Empire and your Federation. Therefore, the latter may expect some rather dire diplomatic fallout from the former should you decide to treat Commander Sulu in too harsh a manner.”

  Harriman just stood behind the lectern, stunned, blinking, and silent. Sulu could not recall ever having seen him — or any of the assembled brass, for that matter — looking quite so poleaxed as all five admirals did at this moment. Kamarag stood in patient silence beside Sulu as the board members literally closed ranks, going into a brief huddle, which Harriman dispersed after perhaps half a minute of harsh whispers.

  “Commander Sulu, Ambassador Kamarag,” said Harriman. “I’m calling a ten-minute recess while the board of inquiry deliberates in private.”

  Sulu found that more than a little confusing. “But I haven’t even entered a plea yet.”

  “Well, now you have another ten minutes to think about it before you do,” Harriman said before ringing the bell on his lectern once again, and then leading the other four admirals and both ensigns out of the chamber.

  Stroking his chin thoughtfully, Sulu turned toward Kamarag, who had remained standing in the room’s center.

  “I’m not sure what you hoped to accomplish here, Mister Ambassador,” Sulu said.

  “Justice was what I hoped to accomplish, Commander. And the repayment of a personal debt I incurred when you and your people saved my life at Korvat, and then took decisive action against those responsible for the bombing there.”

  Sulu shook his head, not much more comfortable with Kamarag’s praise than with Starfleet Command’s opprobrium. “You don’t owe me anything, Ambassador,” he said. “Whatever my crew and I did in rescuing you and going after the albino, we did because we thought duty required it.”

  “I understand that, Commander. But you must understand something as well: my House is allied with that of Kang, whose life you also saved. Therefore Kang felt he had to — how do you humans put it? — ‘call in a few markers’ to persuade me to speak to your superiors on your behalf.”

  “Thank you, Mister Ambassador,” Sulu said, though he suspected that Ambassadors Sarek and Dax might have put some pressure on Kamarag to intervene as well. “And please pass my thanks along to Captain Kang.”

  Kamarag scowled. “Do not mistake our actions for pure altruism, Commander. Your service to Kang amounted to a blood debt owed by both our allied Houses. And I do not relish finding myself indebted to a human any more than Kang does, our current mutual peace efforts notwithstanding.”

  Sulu allowed a small smile to emerge. And just when these people were finally
beginning to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

  “Do you think there really will be a peace effort going forward, Ambassador?” he said. “Even after everything that’s happened over the past couple of weeks?”

  The hulking Klingon responded with a vulpine smile of his own. “We Klingons are nothing if not tenacious. Especially when in pursuit of a worthy goal — so long as the more belligerent among us can be persuaded that a goal not achievable through warfare can indeed be a worthy one.”

  Sulu thought that sounded like a lot to expect, particularly from a society as aggressive as the Klingon Empire. But he also knew he didn’t need to dig too deeply into the history of his own species to find barbarities that might make Kamarag weep, if he only had the tear ducts for it.

  “I suspect that Curzon Dax contributed at least as much persuasion as I did,” Sulu said, feeling a momentary flash of envy for the Trill junior ambassador who had apparently “won his spurs,” so to speak, during the aftermath of the Korvat affair — at least in the eyes of some fairly influential figures in the Klingon Empire.

  “Perhaps,” Kamarag said. “I will leave such questions for future academics and historians to analyze. But it should suffice to say that I remain confident that talks between our respective governments will resume soon enough, either on Korvat or elsewhere. And more importantly, my debt to you, as well as Kang’s, is now settled — in spite of the insult I suffered at the hands of your doctors.”

  Sulu frowned, confused. “Insult?”

  “Your overly thorough healers deprived me of the battle scars I won legitimately at the Korvat conference.”

  With that, the ambassador began heading back toward the door through which he had made such a dramatic entrance only a few short minutes earlier. “Oh well,” he said over his shoulder, “there will no doubt be other peace conferences where more such scars will be easily obtainable.”

  Just before he vanished from sight, Kamarag favored Sulu with a momentary but nonetheless fearsome display of teeth, as well as a deep and resounding laugh. A moment later, Sulu stood alone in the wide chamber.

  When Admiral Harriman returned a few minutes later, wearing the frown of a man who’d been forced at phaser-point to pick the best of a bad lot of options, Sulu could only hope that all the kindnesses that friends and enemies alike had extended on his behalf hadn’t damned him outright.

  FORTY-THREE

  Stardate 9049.7 (Early 2290)

  U.S.S. Excelsior

  Janice Rand walked quickly down the corridor alongside Lieutenant Commander Cutler, bound for transporter room three in answer to Hikaru Sulu’s terse call from Starfleet Headquarters.

  Sulu had requested a beam-up in five minutes’ time, but hadn’t said a word about how his hearing had turned out. Worse, he had signed off without allowing either Rand or Cutler to ask him any questions about how the initial session of the board of inquiry had gone — and why it had concluded so quickly.

  He couldn’t have assured Rand’s presence in the transporter room any more successfully had he issued top priority orders to summon her there.

  Still, Rand didn’t think Sulu’s reticence could be a very good sign, even though she couldn’t dismiss the possibility that he’d simply been too busy when he’d called to have a conversation with her. She also wasn’t sure what the extreme brevity of Sulu’s hearing might portend. Had the assembled Starfleet brass needed only enough time to schedule a general court-martial for a later date?

  Relax, Janice, Rand told herself as the transporter room doors hissed open to admit Cutler, whom she immediately followed inside. If Starfleet Command really has decided to throw the book at him, wouldn’t they have clapped him in irons instead of letting him beam right back aboard the scene of the alleged crime?

  “Commanders,” said the transporter operator, a chief petty officer named Renyck, obviously addressing them both.

  Acknowledging the young man with a curt nod, Rand stepped beside him and glanced at the settings on the sleek console that fronted the transporter stage. Renyck had already established a signal lock with Starfleet Headquarters, and appeared to be about to energize the pads.

  “Chief, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take over here for a minute or two,” she said even as she stepped directly beside him, gently but firmly nudging him out of her way.

  “Of course, Commander,” Renyck said in sheepish tones, withdrawing to the right side of the console.

  Although pressing duties of her own awaited her up on the bridge, Rand wasn’t about to delegate the retrieval of her old friend to some junior officer, however talented he might be. She gathered from Cutler’s somber expression that Excelsior’s de facto first officer felt much the same way.

  Once she finished making certain that the transporter lock was in order, she placed her hand on the three slide levers that activated the materialization sequence, then gently pressed them forward.

  A narrow curtain of light suddenly stretched from one of the overhead beam emitters down to the circular pad on the raised dais directly beneath it. The light instantly metamorphosed into a luminous column of energy, then swiftly faded away in an ephemeral spray of sparkling brilliance.

  Hikaru Sulu stood alone on the transporter stage, still as smartly turned out in his dress uniform as he had been when he’d beamed down about thirty minutes earlier. His neutral, almost stony facial expression gave nothing away.

  “Permission to come aboard?” Sulu said.

  Cutler nodded, her mien as grave as Sulu’s. “Granted, Commander.”

  So which one of you am I going to call “Captain” from now on? Rand thought, looking first at Cutler, then at Sulu.

  A smile slowly spread across Sulu’s face. His gaze locking onto Cutler’s, he reached toward the spot on his belt where a phaser would have been holstered had he been carrying a sidearm.

  He pulled out a small, hinged case of the sort that military men have used since time immemorial to store medals and other insignia, and opened it. He held up the open case to give both Cutler and Rand a good, long look at the pair of triple-barred metal uniform insignia inside.

  Cutler looked shocked, as though she had been expecting a very different outcome. Rand wasn’t a bit surprised by Cutler’s reaction, given all the hostility she had shown Sulu prior to the past week or so. After all, Sulu had effectively thwarted Cutler’s ambition to serve as Captain Styles’s first officer, just by reporting for duty aboard Excelsior. And now he had just taken Excelsior itself away from her.

  But what Rand didn’t expect was the admiring smile that suddenly lit up Cutler’s formerly hard countenance.

  “Welcome aboard,” Cutler said. “And congratulations. Captain Sulu.”

  • • •

  “Level, please?” the turbolift control panel said in a monotone male voice as Janice Rand and Meredith Cutler followed him into the turbolift.

  “Bridge,” Sulu said.

  The lift surged into motion. “Thank you.”

  It occurred to Sulu then that one of his first actions as Excelsior’s captain ought to be to program a less obnoxious voice into the turbolift systems. He wondered idly whether Dr. Chapel, if she were still aboard, might consent to having her voiceprint adapted for that purpose. . . .

  “You still haven’t explained exactly how you persuaded Starfleet Command to back off, Captain,” Rand said wryly as she helped Sulu apply his new captain’s insignia to his dress tunic. “Much less how you got them to give you a promotion.”

  “Those are both excellent questions,” Cutler said, obviously working hard to hold down a surprisingly companionable grin. “Blackjack Harriman in particular isn’t exactly the president of your fan club, Captain.”

  Sulu offered up a deliberately enigmatic smile as the decks sped past as quickly as heartbeats. He paused, as though pondering exactly how candid he wanted to be in front of Meredith Cutler.

  “Let’s just say it never hurts to have friends in the right places who are willing to speak
up for you,” he said at length.

  Cutler nodded, and her smile faltered. “Now that you’re assuming command formally, I suppose you’ll be expecting my resignation,” she said.

  Despite his mostly prickly relationship with Cutler up until now, the bluntness of her comment startled him. “Why, Commander? Are you unhappy aboard Excelsior?”

  “Respectfully, Captain, that isn’t the right question to ask,” Cutler said. “I suppose you could say I was happy working under Lawrence Styles, but that’s now a moot point. Now that you’ve stepped into his job, you have to assemble a command staff that you’re comfortable with. And I’m sure you’ll want a first officer who’s more . . . compatible with your style of command than I am.”

  Sulu couldn’t deny that Cutler wouldn’t have been his first choice for the exec job. In fact, the one person he’d most often imagined at his right hand was Pavel Chekov, who was serving currently as Jim Kirk’s tactical officer and chief of security. But Pavel’s not here, he reminded himself. And I really don’t know for sure if he’d want to leave the Enterprise right now, even to become Excelsior’s second-in-command.

  And he also couldn’t deny that Cutler had risen to the occasion under some extremely difficult circumstances, wisely counseling restraint and rising above the mutual antipathy they’d felt since he’d first come aboard Excelsior.

  “We may have had our differences, Commander,” he said at length. “But you covered my back when it counted most.”

  Cutler chuckled ruefully as she shook her head. “When I wasn’t trying to stick a knife into it, you mean.”

  The turbolift came to a stop and the doors opened with a pneumatic hiss onto the bridge’s aft starboard side.

  “Maybe we all ought to agree not to make any big changes for a little while,” Rand said, hoping to disperse the tension in the air. “At least until after our new captain has had a chance to sit down in the big chair once or twice.”