Not Anik of Matern, the first officer, who heard the order given. Not Lojur, the Kothan navigator who laid in the course. Not Lieutenant Shandra Docksey at helm as she sent the Excelsior hurtling in a direction that was not remotely akin to the one that she had thought she'd be following. Not even Commander Rand at communications.
Nevertheless, somebody had to say something. At first it looked like it was going to be Rand, thanks to her long association with Captain Sulu. But Anik took it upon herself to do it. She stepped forward on her delicate legs, cleared her throat and said, "Captain …"
He turned in his chair and looked remarkably calm. They both knew exactly what she was going to say, so it was just a matter of her saying it.
"The course you've indicated for us is not the course to Centrelis."
"Not necessarily, Commander," he said reasonably. Anik seemed momentarily confused, as if uncertain he'd heard the statement. "Sir …?"
"It's simply not the shortest route to Centrelis. I've decided we're going to take the scenic route."
"The … scenic route, sir?"
"That's right, Commander. Life is too short not to take time to savor the pretty things in life. Don't you agree?"
Docksey and Lojur exchanged glances.
Anik looked at him suspiciously. "Sir …"
"The course is as I ordered it, Commander. On my responsibility. Do you have a problem with that?"
"Sir … it's not whether I have a problem with it or not. It's whether Starfleet will have a problem with it."
"Are you lecturing me, Commander?"
The bridge had gotten very quiet. Anik had that ethereal look, but no one doubted her strength of character or spirit. She was not someone who would permit herself to be intimidated or pushed around.
Sulu met Anik's level gaze, and then said with exceeding calm, "I know what I'm doing, Commander."
"Yes, Captain. I think we all know what you're doing," Anik replied. "And it is my recommendation that—"
It was at that moment that the distress signal came.
"Captain," said Rand urgently. "Call for assistance coming in." It was a fair guess that never, in the history of Starfleet, had news of a ship in trouble been greeted with such relief. "Cargo ship Burton in sector two-nine-J, with a malfunctioning warp coil. They need to abandon ship and are requesting immediate assistance."
"Signal that—" He paused … looked at Anik … and then smiled. "Signal that we anticipated their request, and will rendezvous with them at …" He looked to Lojur, eyebrows raised questioningly.
"We can be there in"—Lojur checked his instruments—"forty-seven minutes, sir."
"In forty-seven minutes," Sulu said. "We will off-load the crew and cargo to Excelsior, and transport them to Starbase Nine."
"Yes, sir," she said, and turned to her comm board to relay the message.
As she did so, Sulu looked evenly at Anik. "Satisfied, Commander?"
There were a few things that occurred to Anik, but instead of saying any of them she just smiled thinly. "Perfectly, Captain."
The rescue went off without problems. The Burton was not unsalvageable. By the time the crew and cargo had been removed from the cargo ship, the warp-coil breach had poisoned the interior of the vessel. Still, it could easily be decontaminated, so the Excelsior took the ship in tow.
The crew of the Burton was duly impressed by the Excelsior. Most of the crew members had spent their entire careers on small ships, and had never seen anything like the Excelsior except in pictures. The crew of the Excelsior was polite and cooperative, and no one from the Burton would possibly have been able to guess that the Excelsior's crew was preoccupied and concerned with the situation regarding the captain.
In short order the starship arrived at Starbase 9, where the Burton's crew and cargo was removed with relative ease. All things considered, it was easily one of the more routine, even pedestrian, missions that the Excelsior had ever undertaken.
As it happened, it also turned out to be one of the costliest.
The Excelsior was still in orbit around Starbase 9, just finishing up the transfer, when Janice Rand turned from her communications panel and looked to Sulu. He was in his command chair, staring resolutely at the screen. He seemed as if he were ever so slightly out of phase: aware of the world around him and yet just a bit removed from it. But somehow he seemed to sense that Rand had to say something to him before she actually said it. He turned to face her before she'd had the opportunity to open her mouth.
"Incoming communication, sir. Admiral LaVelle."
The bridge crew reacted to this. LaVelle was pretty high up on the food chain. If, as they had already come to suspect, this little jaunt was unauthorized, then they were going to hear about it now. The immediate thought on all their minds was that Sulu was going to get up from his command chair and ask that the call be transferred to his quarters, where he could take it in privacy.
So there was collective, if unspoken, surprise when he said, "On-screen, Commander."
Rand, along with the others, had thought he would want the shield of his quarters to conduct the call. "Sir—?" she began.
But he was calm, certain. "On-screen, Commander." And, making sure that she knew he was aware of what was going through her mind, he added, "I have nothing to hide."
With a small uncertain nod of her head that seemed to say, Oooookay, if you say so, she transferred the signal to the main screen.
The image of Starbase 9 vanished from the screen, to be replaced by the concerned face of Admiral LaVelle. Even she seemed surprised to be on an open channel. "Captain Sulu, a more private forum might be preferable for you," she said.
"I have no secrets from my crew, Admiral," Sulu replied sanguinely.
"Very well. Then I'll simply ask you what the hell you think you're doing?"
"What I have to, Admiral. That's all anyone does," he said evenly.
"What anyone does in Starfleet is obey orders," said LaVelle. "Your orders have you going to Centrelis. And regulations having you staying away from Askalon Five. I commend you for stopping along your one-way voyage-to-court-martial to help the transport ship Burton. You must have known that the command of Starbase Nine would routinely inform Starfleet of the aid provided by Excelsior."
"Yes, Admiral, I was quite aware."
"So you gave up the additional time you might have had to reach Askalon Five before we found out about it. As I said, commendable. Out of respect to your act of self-sacrifice, I will give you this one opportunity to rectify the situation. I am perfectly willing to write up this little detour as a response to a distress signal. You can walk away from this incident with a nice little notation on your file. That will give us ample opportunity to go on with our lives and forget that there was any … 'irregularity' in anyone's conduct. What do you say?" she asked with a touch of hopefulness in her voice.
"I say I'm most appreciative of the offer, Admiral."
LaVelle nodded slowly. "You're continuing on your heading to Askalon Five, aren't you."
"Yes, Admiral."
"In that case, Captain, the penalties will be quite harsh, and immediate measures, with prejudice, will have to be taken. Do you understand that?"
There was deathly silence in the bridge upon that pronouncement.
"Yes, Admiral. I understand that you're doing what you have to," Sulu said levelly. "I guess that doesn't make you all that different from me, does it."
"It does in one major respect, Captain. You see … one of us isn't in trouble."
She allowed that pronouncement to hang there, and then her image blinked off the screen.
All eyes were upon Sulu, waiting for him to say something … anything. Waiting, preferably, for him to say something that indicated he was steering himself away from this potentially self-destructive course.
Slowly he surveyed his command crew.
"Who's going to relieve me of command?" he asked.
There was strength in his voice, challenge. A gauntlet thrown down, which no one was especially eager to pick up. Sulu seemed to radiate confidence and conviction.
"Listen to me carefully, people," he said. "I am not crazy. I have not lost my mind, nor have I become drunk with power. We've been down this road before, with far higher stakes. When I told Captain Kirk the location of the Khitomer conference, I was aiding and abetting a convicted criminal. I could have been brought up on charges of treason. But I acted out of loyalty and out of honor, being willing to betray my country rather than betray my friend. It's out of that same sense of honor that I act now."
"But sir," said Rand as gently as she could, "it's not the same. This is a useless risk of your career because … because …"
"Because Demora is dead."
"Yes, sir," Anik spoke up.
"That may very well be," Sulu agreed. "But her memory is still very much alive. And what I'm doing, I'm doing on behalf of her memory. That, and because I'm determined to find out what sort of circumstance on Askalon Five could have led to her death. She didn't simply take a wrong step and fall off a cliff, or die because some native creature leaped out from hiding and attacked her. Demora went berserk. She died naked and savage, shot down by her own commander. And I will know why." His voice began to rise with unexpected vehemence. "Not ten months from now, or a year from now, or six years from now. I will know right now. I owe her that. And if Starfleet feels they don't owe me that, then that will be between Starfleet and me. Do we understand each other?"
There was a long moment when everyone looked to each other to see how they were responding. It was as if the command crew needed to be of one mind so that they could function.
And then Anik said simply, "Aye, sir."
"Aye, sir," echoed Janice Rand.
One by one, the votes of confidence came. Sulu nodded to each one individually. And then he said, "Helm … best speed to Askalon Five."
"Best speed," echoed Docksey, even as she thought to herself, We are in so much trouble. …
The Excelsior whipped around and hurtled away from Starbase 9.
And light-years away, the call went out to the nearest starship in a position to stop them. . . . "
You really think you're going to be saved, don't you. You really think you have a prayer. . . ."
The voice floated through her head as aimlessly as she herself floated in the ooze. She tried to reject what she was hearing, but it permeated her at every level. There was no escape from it, no defense she could erect. . . .
"You're all alone. You're mine, just like your mother was, and this time you're not going to get away … you're going to stay mine, and maybe I'll let you out eventually before I wipe your memory and put you back so you can float in bewilderment some more, always wondering, always confused … maybe I've already done it … maybe I'm doing it right now and you're too muddled to realize it … you don't know up, down, or sideways, everything's gone, and you know what? We can give it all back to you and then take it away again, and you'll never know … you'll never ever know. …"
And the thought came to her, the thought of salvation …
and curiously that most fleeting of thoughts was not of her captain, of her shipmates, of anyone whom she considered a close friend. . . .
Like the child she had once been, one word drifted through her mind …
Daddy …
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