Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (39 page)

“I see,” Sulu said. Anger made his words tight and hard, but he did not raise his voice. He also did not say, What about afterwards? Do you really expect me to believe that afterwards, after Styles has had a chance to command that ship, that he’ll turn
Excelsior
over to me without a protest?

All this was equally obvious to Morrow, who at least had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Commander, after all the turmoil has died down, I promise you Starfleet will make this up to you. Even if things don’t turn out quite as we expect, you’ll find your cooperation well rewarded.”

No ship existed, no ship was even planned, that came close to
Excelsior.
Sulu feared that once he lost it, he lost it forever. Being told that something could make up for that was so outrageous, so absurd, that Sulu nearly burst out laughing.

“I will find that reward quite fascinating to contemplate,” Sulu said bitterly. “If the Admiral will pardon me, I have—absolutely nothing to do.”

Morrow frowned at him, not knowing how to interpret what Sulu said.

Without waiting to be dismissed, Sulu turned and strode from the lavishly appointed office.

Dannan Stuart awakened at sunrise, in her mother’s house. The young starfleet pilot could smell the new-cut hay from the field beyond the horse pasture. The bird that had been singing all night, confused by the huge full moon, twittered into silence. Dannan flung off the bedclothes and wrapped herself in her silken. It clasped itself around her.

The floor creaked beneath her bare feet. She leaned on the sill of the small window and looked out across the valley. The wall of the house was half a meter thick, for Dannan’s mother’s house was five hundred years old and more. Its massive walls insulated the interior against the occasional summer heat of northern Scotland, and against the continual damp cold of winter. Today would be a perfect day, cool and sharp, the sun bright. A better day for saying hello than saying good-bye.

The valley glowed with dawn. Dew lay thick on every surface. Dannan could see a darker path through the silvered grass, where her little brother’s old pony had made its way to the creek to drink. Dannan remembered coming home from school on vacation and looking out on mornings just like this, to see young Peter riding Star bareback and bridleless at a gallop across the field. She remembered all the times she had been mean and impatient, when the prospect of taking care of a pesky child had been too much to bear. Often she had been too busy to pay him much heed. She had been so eager to go off drinking and carousing with her friends that she had pushed Peter aside. All he had ever wanted, since he was old enough to understand what Dannan planned for her life, all he had ever wanted from her was to hear her tell her stories.

Poor kid,
she thought,
poor brother. We did have some fun, in the last few years, but I regret all the times I closed you out and went my own way. I hope you found it in your heart to forgive me.

She whistled from the window. A few minutes later Star trotted slowly over the crest of the hill. He was old and stiff, and he had been retired since Peter went away to school. The bay pony’s black muzzle was speckled with white.

Dannan climbed down the steep, twisty stairs to the main floor of the house, grabbed a carrot and a piece of bread from the kitchen, and ran through the back yard to the pasture fence. The dew was cold on her feet, but the water beaded up on the silken. The motion of her running spun the droplets sparkling into the sunlight.

Star whickered at her and reached his head over the fence for the treats she brought. He nipped up the bread with his soft, mobile lips and crunched the carrot in two bites. Dannan rubbed his cheek, then traced the unusual five-pointed marking of white on his forehead.

When Peter came home and whistled, Star whinnied like a colt and galloped to him, age and arthritis forgotten.

“Poor old boy,” Dannan said. “You’re lucky, you never have to understand he isn’t coming back. Maybe you’ll even forget him.”

She gave the pony one last pat and trudged back across the wet grass. The house peered at her from beneath eyebrows of thick willow thatch, where the edge of the roof had been trimmed in graceful curves to leave the upstairs windows open to the light.

In the kitchen she made a pot of coffee and put the morning’s bread in to bake, though she did not feel very hungry. She had not, since hearing the news of Peter’s death on board the
Enterprise.

The kitchen led into her mother’s studio. Dannan could smell the heavy odor of wet clay and the sharper electric tang of ozone from the kiln. Dannan rubbed her fingers around the fluid shape of the mug from which she drank her coffee. Her mother sent her sculptures and commissions into the city to be fired in her co-operative’s radioactive kiln. The radiation interacted with the glazes she used, producing an unusual depth and patina. But the things she threw for use around the house, she fired in the traditional way in her studio.

She had spent all day, and most of the night, in the studio. Dannan had left her alone. It was her mother’s way, in bad times, to close herself off with her work. Dannan would have liked to talk about what had happened and about Peter, but she knew her mother would not be able to do that for some while yet.

Dannan heard a brief, shivery sound from the street outside, a sound she knew well but seldom heard in her mother’s house. Dannan preferred traveling here by more ordinary means, by train or ground car. The time gave her a chance to make the transition from high tech to countryside. Beaming in, besides being too expensive to use very often for personal business, was terribly abrupt.

But the sound of a transporter beam was unmistakable. The loud knock at the front door confirmed her assumption.

She hurried into the hallway and opened the door just as her uncle, Montgomery Scott of Starfleet, raised his hand to rap insistently again.

“Hush, Uncle,” she said. “Mother’s asleep—don’t you know what time it is?”

“Nay,” Uncle Montgomery said. “I dinna think to look.”

“It’s just past dawn.” Even thirty years on a starship should not have taken his ability to glance at the height of the sun and realize it was early; but, then, even thirty years on a starship had not changed his indifference to the subtler niceties of social interaction.

Montgomery stood on the doorstep just off the deserted cobbled street. One of the things Dannan loved about this house was that its front door led directly into the village and its back into the countryside. She had grown up here, she was used to it, but friends she had brought home from school for a visit, when she was in the Academy, never failed to find it surprising.

“Well?” said Uncle Montgomery. “Are ye going to let me in or are ye going to stand in the street all day in thy skivvies?”

“Don’t insult my clothing,” Dannan said. “It’s sensitive to discourtesy.”

“I knew I should ha’ beamed straight in,” he muttered.

Dannan stood aside to let him pass. Even Uncle Montgomery had better manners than to beam directly into a private home, whether it belonged to his sister or not.

He tramped to the kitchen and looked at the coffeepot with distaste.

“Is there no tea?”

“You know where it is as well as I do,” Dannan said. She sat down and hooked her bare feet over a rung of the chair.

“I’m in no mood for thine impertinence, young lady,” he said.

“We’re not on Starfleet ground now,” she said. She resisted pointing out that even when they were on Starfleet ground, she was only one grade in rank beneath him and thus rated being treated as a colleague rather than as a subordinate. “We’re both guests in Mother’s house, and I think we should call a truce.”

He shrugged and sat down without getting himself any tea. He fidgeted in silence for some minutes.

“When is the funeral?” he finally asked.

“Ten o’clock,” Dannan said.

He lapsed again into silence. Dannan could not think of any subject to bring up that would not cause one or the other or both of them pain. They had never got along very well. He had opposed her joining Starfleet, saying she was too spoiled and undisciplined ever to succeed. When she did succeed, he never acknowledged it. He never said a word to indicate that he had been wrong. Dannan assumed he was still waiting for her to fail.

The message system chimed softly and the reception light turned on. Grateful for the diversion, Dannan rose to check it.

The message was addressed to her. This surprised her. No one but Hunter, her commanding officer, knew where she had gone. She turned it on.

Dannan immediately recognized the image that formed before her. Peter had described Lieutenant Saavik in his letters more than once. She was just as beautiful as he had said. She had great presence; she gave the impression of strength, intelligence, and depth. Dannan began to understand why Peter had spent so much time talking about her when he wrote.

“Please forgive me for intruding upon your privacy,” the young Vulcan said. “My name is Saavik. I cannot convey my message in person, as I am unable to accompany the
Enterprise
to Earth. I knew your brother, Peter Preston. He spoke of you often, with admiration and with love. He was my student in mathematics. He was quick and diligent and he found great satisfaction in the beauty of the subject.” The image of Saavik hesitated. “Though I was the teacher, he taught me many things. The most important lesson was that of friendship, which I had never experienced before I met your brother. I may discover other friends, but I will cherish the memory of Peter always. I would not have been able to speak of these feelings had I never met him; that is one of the things he taught me. He was a sweet child, a wholly admirable person, and he saved many lives with his sacrifice. This is perhaps as little comfort to you as it is to me, but it is true.” Saavik paused, collecting herself, Dannan thought, fighting to keep her emotions hidden, as her culture demanded. “I hope that someday we may meet, and speak of him to each other. Farewell.”

The image on the tape faded out. Dannan removed the message disk and slid it inside her silken, which obediently formed a pocket for it.

Dannan returned to the kitchen.

“What was that?”

“Just a message,” Dannan said, trying to keep her voice steady. “Uncle, what happened?” When she asked the question, her voice did break.

“I canna tell ye,” he said. “ ’Tis all top secret.”

“But everybody already knows about Genesis,” Dannan said. “Trust Starfleet to put something everybody already knows under seal! But I don’t care about that. I just want to know what happened to Peter!”

“I’ll not have you maligning Starfleet—”

“What was he doing on the
Enterprise,
anyway? Why was he under your command?”

“Because ye wouldna take him under yours!”

“I’m his sister! It wasn’t proper for either one of us to train him!”

“Proper! Who says it isna proper? I’ll not be accused of favoritism by an impudent—”

“Favoritism!” She laughed angrily. “I’ll bet you demanded three times as much from Peter as you did from anyone else! Favoritism! Others might accuse you of that, but your family knows better!”

“ ’Tis for the family that I arranged to teach him! I didna want him to be ill-taught—”

“Is that why you won’t tell me what happened? Did you push him beyond his abilities? Did you put him where he shouldn’t have been?”

“None o’ the bairns should ha’ been where they were,” he said so sadly that Dannan felt a twinge of pity through her grief. “They were all pushed beyond their abilities.”

“By Admiral James Kirk,” Dannan said bitterly, softly. “Admiral Kirk, who—”

“I willna tolerate slander!”

“I’m not saying anything everybody else hasn’t been saying for days,” Dannan said. “The last two times he got his hands on the
Enterprise,
the captains died. First Decker, now Spock. If I had command of a ship I wouldn’t let him within a light-year of it!”

“Ye dinna know anything about the situations! And ye’ll never get wi’in a light-year of command if any friend o’ the admiral hears ye speaking like that!”

“Or if you have anything to say about it?”

“ ’Twillna take a report from me for thy superiors to see ye are too hot-headed for command.”

What happened to the truce?
Dannan thought.
Did I start this? I didn’t intend to, if I did.

“All I wanted to know was what really happened to my brother,” she said.

Uncle Montgomery stood up, stalked out into the yard, and would not speak to her again.

Later that morning, Dannan endured the memorial for Peter. She barely listened to it. Today was the first time in years that she had been in a church. She sat next to her mother, holding her hand.

The pastor described Peter as an obedient and dutiful little boy—a boring creature, not very similar to what he had been as a child, and nothing at all like the sharp and independent young man he had been well on his way to becoming. Dannan wanted to jump up and push the clergyman aside and read everyone her last letter from Peter, written just before he died, received after she knew he had been killed. She smiled, thinking of the practical joke he had played on Admiral Kirk. That took nerve, it did, to face down a general officer.