Forged in Fire Read online

  This unlucky little waif simply won’t accept death, Ganik thought. Perhaps he really is a Klingon, in spite of appearances.

  Ganik cleared his throat awkwardly, a predator’s grin creeping across his emerald features. “D’Jinnea, about that adoption idea . . .”

  TWO

  Stardate 8988.2 (Late 2289)

  U.S.S. Excelsior

  This damned thing came apart easily enough, Sulu thought, regarding with mounting frustration the small pile of ODN components that was spread between his elbows. So why is putting it all back together again turning into such a pain in the stern?

  Then he heard Lieutenant Commander Meredith Cutler’s acid-tinged voice before he’d even noticed that she had entered the room. “If you don’t mind my asking, Commander,” Cutler said in a tone pitched barely north of insubordination, “why didn’t you delegate this job to Chief Engineer Lahra, or somebody on her staff?”

  Taking care not to scatter his tool kit or the array of delicate helm relay components he’d just taken apart, Sulu grabbed his dynospanner and set his boots on the bulkhead-mounted ladder. Then he quickly climbed down from the narrow ceiling-access panel into which he had partially crawled.

  I’d be within my rights to bite her head clean off, he thought, straightening his uniform tunic as he turned to face the sharp-featured, fortyish woman. But even though Cutler was only second officer — and therefore his subordinate — Sulu knew better than to go out of his way to antagonize her. It would be more prudent to keep trying to get on friendlier terms with her, not only because she was Excelsior’s chief of security, but also because of her status as a longtime personal friend of Captain Lawrence Styles.

  He swallowed his pride for the moment and smiled broadly — and was immediately gratified to see that his expression seemed to infuriate her. “It’s late, Ms. Cutler,” he said. “Lieutenant Commander Lahra is usually off duty during the gamma watch, unless something really dire is happening to her engines.”

  “I guess I just don’t understand why Excelsior’s first officer would want to be belowdecks crawling around in the Jefferies tubes in the middle of the night,” she said, brushing a stray blond hair away from her eyes.

  “So you’re concerned that I’m doing work that’s beneath my dignity?” His smile broadened. Or maybe you’re just worried that I might show you up in front of the captain, he thought. That might explain why you’re up all hours prowling the bowels of the ship.

  She reddened. “I simply meant that Chief Engineer Lahra could have assigned Tim Henry or one of the junior engineers to rebuild the main navigational deflector.”

  “True enough,” he said with a shrug. “But since this project is mainly going to affect helm efficiency, I thought it best to see to it myself, and Commander Lahra agreed. Why are you so interested, by the way? Aren’t you supposed to be off duty at this hour?”

  Her lips curled into a thin, humorless smile. “A chief of security is never really off duty, Commander. Particularly when she notices that somebody is down on deck fifteen opening up navigational deflector access panels in the dead of night when none of the authorized engineering personnel are present.” He wondered if she might not be making a backhanded swipe at Captain Scott’s surreptitious sabotage of Excelsior’s transwarp computer drive a few years earlier.

  Well, you’re nothing if not “by the book,” Cutler, he thought, not permitting his smile to falter. “I appreciate your diligence,” he said aloud, bowing his head slightly. “Next time I’ll see to it that Chief Lahra sends you the signed paperwork in advance. And in triplicate.”

  Cutler’s mien soured further, and she appeared to have to restrain herself from saying something caustic in response to Sulu’s gentle barb. After a brief pause during which she evidently decided she had already pushed Excelsior’s first officer as far as she dared, she said, “That’s all I ask, Commander.” And with that, she turned on her heel and strode purposefully out into the corridor that lay beyond the nearest exit.

  A familiar voice chose that moment to make its owner’s presence known, startling him into nearly dropping the dynospanner he still clutched in his right hand.

  “Don’t worry about her, Hikaru. I think Cutler’s always been a bit of a hard-ass. Captain Styles seems to see that as a good thing.”

  Grinning, he turned toward the source of the voice. “Janice! You shouldn’t sneak up on me like that. I’m a trained martial artist, remember?”

  Commander Janice Rand returned his smile with interest. “I remember. And a botanist, a physicist, a fencer, and a collector of exotic weapons. So what is a man with so many varied facets doing skulking around in a starship’s underbelly in the middle of the night?”

  Sulu frowned as he realized that Rand was essentially restating the second officer’s question. “Looks like Cutler’s not the only one who’s been keeping tabs on me. You moonlighting in security now?”

  She scoffed. “Running the communications department keeps my hands a bit too full for that. But it also allows me to look around corners for my friends, as long as I’m discreet about it.”

  “So I guess I’ve been around here long enough for you to see that it isn’t a very good idea to be seen talking to me.”

  “That’s why coming down here during the graveyard shift seemed like a better idea than sharing breakfast with you in the crew mess. Styles and Cutler both don’t seem to be huge fans of Enterprise alumni — especially senior officers.”

  A resigned sigh escaped from him, sounding in his own ears like atmosphere venting from a ruptured hull. “If you came down here in the middle of the night to warn me about that, then you’re about three weeks too late. I figured it out for myself when I first came aboard.”

  “Actually, I came down because I overheard Cutler sharpening her knives a little while ago. I wanted to warn you that she might give you a hard time about your midnight maintenance work.” Rand paused, and a sheepish look crossed her face. “Looks like I got here a bit too late. Sorry, Hikaru.”

  He offered her a small smile that he hoped she would find reassuring. “Thanks for making the effort, Janice. So do you think the captain and Cutler have it in for you, too?”

  She shook her head again. “I’m not quite sure yet, which is why I wanted to see you in person instead of warning you in a way that would leave a trail on the comm grid.”

  Sulu grinned. “Sneaky.”

  “No more so than Cutler,” she said, shrugging as she matched his grin. “Anyway, Cutler has made it pretty clear to me that she doesn’t like anyone that the captain doesn’t like. And I know that he hasn’t exactly been the president of the James Kirk Admiration Society for quite a few years now. Especially since that little Mutara Sector caper back in ’eighty-five.”

  Sulu remembered that “caper” very well indeed. Outfitted with the first field-practical transwarp drive system, Excelsior and her crew had been poised to break every warp-speed record right out of Spacedock, thereby assuring her captain an honored place in Starfleet history. Excelsior had also been promised to Sulu, whose promotion from the rank of commander to captain — and whose orders to assume command of this wondrous if still experimental starship, the first of her class — had been signed by Admiral James Kirk himself.

  But fate, the unauthorized mission to recover Captain Spock, and an invasion by a superpowerful alien probe all had conspired to derail Sulu’s plans for starship command. Sulu harbored no regrets about his participation in those events. After all, the actions of Kirk and his officers had literally saved Earth, a fact that allowed Sulu and his friends to essentially escape official punishment for multiple acts of insubordination, sabotage, assault, theft of Starfleet property — and the destruction of the Enterprise. Command might have come down on them a lot harder if it hadn’t been for the intercession of a grateful Federation President, but they hadn’t gotten through it entirely unscathed; Jim Kirk had been demoted, and Sulu’s anticipated promotion was suspended indefinitely.

  No
r, evidently, had Lawrence Styles forgotten the humiliation he must have felt when Excelsior’s transwarp-driven “hot pursuit” of the renegade Enterprise crew had failed so completely, as had the entire transwarp drive project itself. And when Admiral Smillie had signed the orders that most recently aborted Sulu’s incipient captaincy of Excelsior— and assigned him instead to the starship’s first officer position — Styles had made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t happy with Starfleet’s decision to saddle him with a second-in-command whose very presence served as a constant reminder of old humiliations.

  “Maybe I’ve escaped the captain’s wrath so far because he doesn’t associate me with Captain Kirk,” Rand said, dispersing Sulu’s reverie. “After all, it’s been a long time since I served on the Enterprise, and I didn’t stay there anywhere near as long as you did.”

  “Lucky for you, I guess,” Sulu said glumly. “Still, I suppose Captain Styles has his reasons for not warming up to me, even if they’re completely wrongheaded. But I just don’t understand why Cutler has such an ax to grind against me. I mean, she wasn’t even serving aboard Excelsior when we pulled our, ah, stunt at Spacedock.”

  “I’m no psychologist,” Rand said, “but her motivation seems straightforward enough to me.”

  “Then that makes one of us.”

  She scowled at him as though he were an obtuse cadet trainee. “Captain Styles was about to promote her to executive officer before Starfleet overruled him and stuck you into the job.”

  Now all the unpleasantness of the past three weeks was finally beginning to make sense, though he still preferred to find a solution to the problem other than simply pulling rank on Cutler. “I suppose I can’t blame her for feeling slighted,” he said. “Especially since she’s lost out to someone who nearly succeeded in grabbing the center seat away from Lawrence Styles.”

  “Not once, but twice,” Rand said, grinning.

  Sulu sighed and shook his head in bemusement. “Starfleet has really got to start sending psychotherapists out into deep space with starship crews.”

  Rand nodded. “I guess in the meantime we’ll just have to content ourselves with obsessive nocturnal work sessions.”

  “Well, there’s no better distraction from bad situations than hard work,” Sulu said, quoting his great-grandfather Inomata’s thoughts on the subject as he raised his dynospanner to emphasize his point. He was determined not to let himself despair over his current circumstances. “Speaking of which, I’d better get these control modules back in place before the secondary nav deflector ruins our day by smacking us into an asteroid. I wouldn’t want to give Captain Styles or Commander Cutler a real reason not to like me.”

  She looked at the dynospanner and shuddered theatrically. “Next time you feel the need for ‘hard work therapy,’ I’d suggest you do it up in the gym,” she said as she moved toward the same exit Cutler had used. “Fencing is a whole lot less frustrating than reinitializing computer modules.”

  Alone again, he climbed back up the ladder. As he gloomily surveyed the farrago of tools and equipment he had left piled up inside the Jefferies tube, Sulu couldn’t help but agree with his old friend.

  THREE

  Stardate 8990.9 (Late 2289)

  Galdonterre

  Although he had served aboard Excelsior for less than a month, and therefore didn’t yet feel any urgent need to take shore leave, a large portion of the crew had disembarked at Galdonterre, and Sulu had joined them.

  Though he didn’t feel particularly exhausted by his new duties, it was a welcome diversion. He still felt ill at ease around both Captain Styles and Lieutenant Commander Cutler — especially in light of his conversation with Janice Rand yesterday — but sharing some downtime with a handful of his other Excelsior crewmates was definitely helping to nurture his sense of camaraderie.

  He learned, for instance, that junior science officer Lieutenant Christina Schulman had a knack for haggling over the prices of the various artworks offered for sale in the city’s vast open-air marketplace, and that she showed a distinct preference for items carved from trees or other organic materials as opposed to those rendered in stone or metal. Lieutenant (J.G.) Eric Braun, another member of the science crew, was apparently something of an unintentional mimic; he had picked up the accent of the locals after spending only a few minutes among them, and was now drawling his o’s and slurring his sibilant consonants. And transporter chief Darnell Renyck was definitely the life of the party when not on duty.

  It was Renyck who had picked the bar in which Sulu’s group was currently encamped, and though it was seedier than Sulu would have preferred, it didn’t seem to be an overly dangerous place — if one wasn’t too put off by the dozen or so noisy, heavily imbibing Klingon soldiers who were mixed in among the establishment’s extraordinarily diverse nonhuman clientele. Of course, the presence of so many Klingons was hardly surprising on a world that lay on the border between the ragged edge of Federation space and territory controlled by the Klingon Empire. Thankfully, the Klingons were mostly keeping to themselves in the upper level of the bar, even though their raucous laughter, shouts, and boasts were still clearly audible just about everywhere in the building.

  Sulu approached the bar to order a round of drinks for the quintet who shared his table. Schulman wanted something called a Blazing Sunburst, as did her friend, Lieutenant Heather Keith, while Braun, whose nickname at the Academy had apparently been Flyweight, wanted only a single dark beer. Lieutenant Dmitri Valtane and Renyck had more expensive tastes, opting for the Romulan ale that was still illegal on all worlds located closer to the core of Federation space. Sulu wasn’t overly concerned with the cost of the drinks, however, since Starfleet provided a more than adequate stipend to officers who took their shore leaves on planets with cash-based economies.

  The bartender — a gigantic being whose gender wasn’t easily ascertainable — took Sulu’s drink order with a grunt and busied itself pouring the concoctions with its six tattoo-covered, azure-tinted arms. Looking around the bar while he waited, Sulu found his attention drawn to a side door, through which a female humanoid had just finished making a rather unsteady and halting entrance.

  Though Sulu wasn’t immediately familiar with the young woman’s species, her body language wasn’t at all difficult to understand. Sulu watched her peer furtively about the barroom, as though fearful of whom she might encounter here. She approached the bar, turning directly toward him as she lumbered forward. Her gaze locked for a moment with Sulu’s before she backed away apprehensively, melting into the shadows of the booths in the rear of the tavern.

  “Yurrr drinkshhup,” Sulu heard behind him, and he turned to see that the bartender had loaded the drinks onto a slotted carrier tray, which it set down with surprising grace onto the bar.

  “Thank you,” Sulu said as he handed the huge mixologist a wad of credit notes. The creature swiftly distributed the bills into its multiple hands and studied them for a moment before shoving them into a pouch located on the front of its shapeless, drink-spattered garment. Since the barkeep didn’t glare at him — it turned away instead to help another customer — Sulu assumed that either he had tipped appropriately or he had just been cheated out of his change.

  As Sulu moved back to the table, tray in hand, Renyck stood up and held his beefy arms out to grab for the drinks. “Three cheers for the commander,” the transporter chief said pleasantly, his eyes widening to match his grin as he caught sight of the pale blue Romulan ale, which was only quasi-legal at best, even in this part of the galaxy. “And for his discretion!”

  The others took their drinks and raised them in a salute, exclaiming “Here, here,” and “To Commander Sulu.”

  Smiling at the good cheer being directed his way, Sulu pulled out his chair. Before he could sit, however, a sudden movement at the edge of his vision caught his attention. Turning toward the motion, he noticed the unsteady humanoid woman again. Despite the low illumination in the room, he could see that she was staring dir
ectly at him as she swayed slowly back and forth, wobbling and trembling as though caught in the grip of a delirium. If not for the unoccupied table she was using to steady herself, she might have fallen.

  “Looks like you have an admirer, Commander,” Renyck said, grinning and gesturing toward the woman, whom he apparently hadn’t studied quite as carefully as Sulu had. The woman responded by withdrawing again into the darkness that marked the room’s shadowy margins.

  “I noticed her a little earlier,” Sulu said quietly. “Something’s wrong with her.”

  “She looks more sick than drunk to me,” Braun said, squinting as he looked over his shoulder. “Though I suppose I don’t know what passes for normal for her species.”

  Still standing, Sulu pushed his chair back up to the table. “I’m going to see if she needs any help,” he said to no one in particular.

  “You want us with you, Commander?” Valtane asked, appearing ready to spring from his own chair.

  Sulu held up his hand in an as-you-were gesture. “I’ll let you know if I need any backup. Just don’t let that ale knock you out.”

  The woman held Sulu’s gaze as he moved toward her, though she stumbled backward into a dark alcove behind the table she had been using as a crutch. As he approached, taking care to remain in the direct line of sight of his fellow officers, the woman sat down awkwardly on a bench in the corner. Sulu helped to steady her as she propped herself up against the rough block-and-mortar wall behind her.

  “You seemed to be trying to get my attention,” Sulu said softly as he sat beside her on the bench. Though he effectively stood between her and the nearest exit, she exhibited no further desire to run or hide. Sulu couldn’t tell whether this was a sign of trust, resignation, or simple fatigue.

  “Is there something I can do to help you?” he said.

  She merely stared at him with dull, unfocused eyes, and despite the low lighting Sulu could see clearly that she was indeed in dire need of help. Although he knew no more than Braun did about what passed for normal for members of her species, her tremors and profuse perspiration had to be pathological. Sweat was collecting quickly in the small stack of horizontal ridges that covered the bridge of her nose, and had begun to run like a small waterfall down her aquiline nose, spilling in fat droplets onto the barroom floor.